


Say Something

by CatrionaMac



Category: The Last of Us
Genre: F/M, Lemon, Post-Apocalypse, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-10
Updated: 2015-08-19
Packaged: 2018-03-17 06:23:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 23,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3518720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatrionaMac/pseuds/CatrionaMac
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"...the temporal cortex gives up all its stored memories in a bright burst of information that touches the last vestiges of the conscious mind."</p><p>In the moments before her death, Tess remembers the significant events of her life: growing up in the Boston quarantine zone, her time working with Joel, and the fatal events that have led to her bleeding out on the floor of the Massachusetts capitol building.</p><p>This story has 20 planned chapters.</p><p>The collection <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/2066370/chapters/4491858">Sketches of Tess in the Outbreak</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9HlAVgqVcM&spfreload=10">this fanvid</a> are companion pieces to this story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Endings and Beginnings

The mind narrows down to a pinpoint. There is only the cool trigger under the finger, only the door. 

When the door explodes open, the trigger moves under the finger, the pistol roars and flashes. A hundred danger signals scream in alarm, warning the mind to move the body, but the signals are overridden through sheer force of will. The finger squeezes. And again. 

Bullets rip through flesh and organs, shattering bone, snapping sinew. The pistol is empty. The body falls to the ground, broken.

Damage control. The mind kicks into overdrive, but now it has too much to do. It can’t respond to all the pain stimuli so it floods the bloodstream with more adrenaline and then it tries to stop the blood loss but it’s all happening too quickly. The parasite growing in the brain tries to help and sends its spores to the damaged sites but there are too many to repair; this host will die before the parasite gains a foothold here. 

Synapses fire in increasingly random order, the entire neural network is breaking down. The temporal cortex gives up all its stored memories in a bright burst of information that touches the last vestiges of the conscious mind.

Then the brain, deprived of oxygen, shuts down in a cascade failure like an overworked power grid. 

* * *

**July 27, 2033, 4:52 am**

“Alright, watch your head.” Joel used a rusty metal pipe as a lever, his muscles bunching under the green flannel shirt as he raised the heavy beams blocking the doorway. “Alright, go, go, go!” His voice was strained. 

The splintered timber scraped her back as Tess followed Ellie’s wriggling hips through the hole Joel was making in the debris, and she felt the weight of untold tons of collapsed wood and plaster pressing down on her as he grunted with the effort of levering the opening wide enough for them to crawl through. 

 _How the fuck am I going to hold this open from the other side?_ she thought as she joined the girl, who was shaking plaster dust out of her tangled hair.

“Son of a b—“ There was a crack, louder than a shotgun blast, and then a splintering shriek as the beams crashed back down.

“Joel?” She could see the light from his flashlight, but he didn’t answer. “Joel!” _Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck…_

“I’m alive.” He sounded as shaken as she was. Relief flooded her body at the sound of his voice. That was too close. “I’ll…I’ll make my around to—“

The eerie shriek of a clicker split the air and she spun around. 

“Look, they’re here!” Ellie’s voice was high with fear at the sight of the two monsters staggering through the doorway. 

“Tess?” Joel called.

She turned to Ellie. “Run. Run!”

* * *

**January, 2027**

“It’s dislocated,” Mike said, confirming what Tess already knew. Shoulders shouldn’t stick out from the joint that way.

Tess swore. “God damn it, Richie!” He was supposed to come with her on a pickup outside tomorrow, and he would be no fucking use to her with his arm in a sling. She didn’t have anyone else free tomorrow, either. Mike and Carlos were moving product from the hole to the warehouse district, Paulie was still off drumming up new contacts at the FEDRA admin building, and Callie was out of town meeting a dealer.

This...this was going to fuck up her plans significantly, the well-oiled machine of her organization once again grinding to a halt because of Richie’s arrogance and stupidity. 

“I can come with you tomorrow,” Mike offered quietly. He’d known her since she was a teenager, had taught both her and her father the business. He knew what was going through her mind. 

Tess flashed him a quick look of gratitude, both for his offer and for not mentioning what a monumental fuckup Richie was. Mike wasn’t the kind of guy to say “I told you so.” She shook her head. “No. Carlos’s plan needs two people to get past the checkpoint, and those crates need to be in the North End by the end of the day tomorrow.”

“That asshole never woulda got the jump on me if I hadn’t been distracted! I swear, baby, I woulda had him!” Richie said.

“Don’t call me baby.” Tess hissed it through her teeth. She couldn’t believe she’d once found Richie’s little displays charming. She looked up at Mike, whose slate blue eyes were unreadable. But he was pressing his hands together in front of his barrel chest, flexing his shoulders like he did when he was upset about something. “Can you set it? Or am I going to have to pay a medic?” Christ, the number of ration cards she’d spent fixing his fool ass back up. She didn’t even want to think about it. 

Mike ran one large hand over his rough cheek, stubbled with red-gold hair that was fading to silver, like the hair on his head. Finally he nodded. “I’ve done it before. It’s been a while, but I think we can take care of this in house.” 

“Fuck, no!” Richie whined and turned to appeal to Tess. “Baby, you can’t...you gotta get a professional to look at me!”

Tess stared at him. Richard J. Spinelli had showed up in the Boston QZ six months ago from New York. Having heard for years how dangerous the smoking ruins of Manhattan had become, Tess had been sufficiently dazzled by Richie’s good looks and thrilling survival stories of dodging infected in the remains of the Upper East Side that she’d hired him for a job. Six months later, she was sure most of those stories had been lies, or at the very least hugely embellished, and the good looks were starting to bore her, coupled as they were with Richie’s undeniable cowardice and inability to keep his dick in his pants.

“Do it,” she said to Mike. She left the room over Richie’s protests, which turned into howls of pain as Mike presumably worked his magic. 

She wanted to punch a wall. Damn it, she was pissed! She should have kicked Richie’s ass out months ago, but the man was a savant in the bedroom and every time he’d fucked something up she’d been able to explain it away to herself. Even on that very first job he’d screwed up, throwing bottles to draw some infected away from where he and Tess were hunkering down behind a burnt-out Ford 150 and driving their attention toward the approaching FEDRA agents. It was the first time Tess had seen anyone use infected as a weapon against a human enemy, and it would have been highly effective if Mike and Carlos hadn’t been directly in between the infected and the FEDRA troops. They’d barely all gotten out of that one with their skins intact.

The fact that she’d defended him back then, and kept defending him through all his fuckups, both small and big, burned in her throat like bile. 

Mike had cornered her once and said, with trademark bluntness delivered in his hoarse tenor, “You’re thinking with your dick, Tess. Cal never would’ve…”

She’d already been feeling defensive, and she’d blown up at him. “Dad’s not here to run this organization, I fucking am! And I’ll use who I fucking well want to use, old man! If you don’t like it then you can get the fuck out.”

Mike hadn’t talked to her for a week, and Tess hadn’t apologized, but she bitterly regretted losing her temper with him. He had been her right hand man for a long time, and her father’s before that, she should have fucking listened to him. Mike hadn’t mentioned Richie again, but things had been strained between them ever since. 

She couldn’t be angry with Mike. He’d just been trying to warn her. And what she was feeling towards Richie right now was more like disgust than anger. She was incredibly fucking pissed off at herself, but that was not a constructive kind of anger, unsatisfying unless one was prone to self-flagellation or self-destruction, which she was not. She needed to find some outside outlet for her rage.

Mike came out of Richie’s bedroom, mopping his forehead with a dirty rag. “He passed out.” He couldn’t quite keep the curl out of his lip. 

Tess nodded. “Fine.” An unconscious Richie was one that wasn’t fucking whining at her, and that suited her right now. “You know the guy who fucked him up?”

Mike shrugged, his watery blue eyes blinking. “Not personally, but by reputation. Sandoval’s used him for muscle and escort service. He’s a bit of a loner...doesn’t mix well with a crew. Least that’s what I heard.” He frowned at her. “What are you thinking?”

“Can’t let one of my people get his ass handed to him in public like that.” She folded her arms over her chest. “It’s the principle of the thing.”

Mike sighed. “Tess…”

“No, Mike. I know what you’re gonna say. But you were the one who taught me that reputation is important in this business. You know I can’t let this go. If our clients think I can’t even protect my own people…” She shook her head. “And what do you think our competition will do with this? They’re probably circling like sharks who smell blood in the water right now. This is damage control.” Fucking Richie. He _would_ get himself beaten up public, not private. “Tonight. We’ll go down to the Winchester and we’ll put some hurt on this guy. It’ll be like old times.”

Mike looked down, then nodded. “Alright, you’re the boss.” He hesitated. 

“What is it?” Tess tried to keep her voice neutral, but there was a warning there. She was done talking about Richie. To her surprise, Mike wanted to talk about something else. 

“The inventory is short again. I checked the book twice.”

Tess swore. “What the fuck is going on, Mike? Yesterday our drop was gone before we ever got there, now shit’s going missing from our own warehouse? How much is gone? And what?”

“Just small stuff. Some pills, some ammo, a few medical supplies. But you know what this means, don’t you?

She pinched the bridge of her nose. “It means we have a rotten apple in the barrel.” _Richie, so help me, if you’re responsible for this, you won’t live to see tomorrow._

Mike’s silence was eloquent. 

“I’ll deal with it. I just have to be sure first.” _God, could this day get any fucking worse?_

“Tess…”

“I said I’d deal with it, Mike,” she said, her voice sharper than she intended. 

He nodded. “Okay. What about tomorrow?”

She rubbed her eyes with the heel of her hand, suddenly exhausted. “I’ll think of something. Just meet me downstairs at nine. I’m gonna get some sleep.”

* * *

**November 7, 2013**

_Tess clutches the handle of the aluminum briefcase. It feels too light to hold a million dollars, but her dad had showed it to her, all the little bundles of crisp hundred-dollar bills stacked and banded together, just like in a movie. He’s sitting at the kitchen counter, loading a pistol magazine with 9mm bullets, and when he’s done he slides it into the pistol and racks the slide._ That means it’s loaded, _she thinks. She can’t take her eyes off it. It’s also like a movie, but horribly real. She didn’t even know her dad owned a gun. Why would he? He’s an investment banker._

_“Do you have to go? The news lady said to stay inside,” she says._

_“This might be our only chance, sweetheart.” He stands and tucks the pistol into the waistband of his jeans, then gestures to her cousin, Jake. “You know the drill. While I’m gone…”_

_“…Don’t leave the apartment for any reason. Don’t open the door for anyone.” Jake recites. They’ve both heard this speech before._

_Her dad nods. “Good. I’ll see about getting a gun for you while I’m out. In the meantime, keep that baseball bat handy.”_

_“I will, Uncle Liam.” Jake’s voice is solemn. They all remember what happened to the Talbot family a couple weeks ago. The crime scene tape still covers their front door, even though all the bodies had been removed. The police haven’t been back since._

_“Now, Tessa, I’ve got something for you before I go.” He fishes in his pocket. “It’s a little early for Christmas, and I didn’t wrap it, so close your eyes and hold out your hands.”_

_Tess does as she’s told and feels the weight of the cool, hard shape against her fingers before she opens her eyes again. It’s a knife handle. She look up at her dad uncertainly._

_“Whoa!” Jake says, coming closer for a better look. “Is that—?”_

_Her dad smiles grimly. “It’s a switchblade.” He takes the knife from her hands and turns it around to show it to her. “This is the safety lock. You just flip it back and press this button.” The knife makes a quiet click, and then there are four inches of gleaming sharp steel in his hand. Another click on the switch and the blade retracts again. “This is for emergencies only,” he warns her before he presses it back into her hand. “Understand?”_

_Tess nods and tries the switch, nearly dropping the knife when it springs out. It almost feels alive in her hand._

_“Hey, uh, aren’t those things illegal as hell?” Jake asks._

_“Yeah.” Her dad doesn’t say anything else, but his face is troubled like it always is these days. He smiles when he sees her trying to get used to the knife. “That’s a good weapon for you, fast and small, but still able to get the job done. It suits you.”_

_Tess smiles uncertainly. “Thanks, Dad.”_

_“I’d better get going. Jake, I’ll leave my cell in case your parents try to call.”_

_“Okay, Uncle Liam. Thanks.” Jake is eighteen and tries to act cool, but his parents are in Hawaii and it’s been days since anyone’s heard from them. Tess carefully doesn’t say that it’s been over twenty-four hours since she was able to even get a signal on her own phone._

_Tess and Jake look at each other after the door closes and they lock it. He doesn’t say anything, but by unspoken agreement they’re both drawn to the condo’s balcony, twelve stories up and overlooking the city, whose familiar contours have become strange and frightening since the news of the first reported case of cordyceps brain infection in New England, nearly a month earlier._

_“There’s another big fire,” Jake says pointing. “Over towards the harbor, looks like.”_

_She nods. “Look, they built more of the wall. It looks really high.” The new quarantine zone walls are going up over a mile from where they now stand. It looks so close, but the man from the military who visited them said that space inside was extremely limited and they’d be put into a lottery for it just like everyone else whose homes were outside the perimeter. Her dad had spoken a few choice words about that after the man left._

_“Do you think that man can really get us onto the list for the zone?” she asks Jake._

_“I sure as fuck hope so. He’d better, for a million bucks.” Jake sighs and looks out over the city. She wonders if he’s thinking about his parents, but she doesn’t want to ask. Even if they could get back to Boston from Hawaii at this point, they’d still be left out of the quarantine zone. It’s not even big enough for the entire population of Boston, and Aunt Mary and Uncle Jin live in Cambridge, not Boston proper._

_Jake shakes a cigarette out of a crumpled package and grimaces. “Last one.” He lights it and takes a long drag, then hands it to her. Tess breathes the hot smoke deep into her lungs without coughing, the hit of nicotine makes her head light for a moment. The first time Jake offered her a smoke, the day the outbreak reached their part of the country, it had been something of a joke. She’d inhaled it badly and spent the next twenty minutes coughing, to Jake’s amusement. But the shared cigarette has become a ritual with them over the past few weeks. He doesn’t have to tell her that, like all the trappings of life before, this too will be falling away. She’s only twelve, but she’s smart enough to know that the ongoing riots in the streets mean life won’t be returning to normal anytime soon. She can see the smoking ruin of the bodega where Jake bought that last pack of cigarettes just across the street from them, and she wonders what will happen to all the people who don’t have a million dollars to buy themselves into the quarantine zone._

_She blows the smoke out from her nose, which makes Jake cackle. “Always knew you weren’t as much of a good girl as you pretended to be, Tess.”_

_She rolls her eyes. “Oh, shut up.” She hands him the cigarette back, but the comment thrills her in a way she can’t explain. She’s sorry for him that Jake isn’t with his parents, but she’s selfishly glad that he’s here with her, that she’s not alone._

_They pass the dwindling cigarette back and forth and watch the city of Boston burning._

* * *

**January, 2027**

Tess tried not to grind her teeth at the way Richie was lagging behind her brisk walking pace. He was cradling his arm to his chest and visibly wincing at every tiny jostle. In the past this would have elicited some sympathy from her, but she was still too pissed off at him. She hadn’t been able to sleep, she’d just tossed and turned on her mattress until she finally gave it up as a bad job. 

Mike wasn’t saying much of anything, but his silence told her more than words ever would. He didn’t agree with her decision, but he would support her when it came down to teaching Richie’s attacker a lesson. 

And then, she’d have to get rid of Richie. 

She knew she had to do it. Even if he wasn’t stealing from her, he was too unreliable, and he had gotten much, much too complacent about the security of his place in her organization…and her bed. _Tomorrow,_ she thought. _I’ll have Mike take him over to the West End and turn him loose, tell him he’s not welcome here anymore._  

“Tess, baby, slow down,” Richie said. 

She wheeled on him. “Do _not_ fucking call me baby. Ever.” Did he not know how close to the edge she was? He was going to have to talk fast to get back in her good graces this time, that’s for damn sure, but talking fast was what Richie was best at. 

“C’mon, Tess,” Richie said. “Don’t be like that. I said I was sorry.” His voice was petulant, like a sulky child’s. He reached out with his good arm and trailed a finger from her jaw to her collarbone, and his voice deepened into that cadence she could never resist. “C’mon, beautiful.”

“Cut it out,” she said, keeping her voice low. “We’re almost there.” She grabbed his hand in hers but she held it too long, and she could see his eyes widen in knowing triumph before she dropped it and turned on her heel to stalk toward the bar. She still liked the way his hand on her skin made her feel. She didn’t miss the way Mike’s lips pressed together in disapproval.

 _I know, I know, Mike,_ she thought. It was like Richie had cast a spell on her. 

“Tess, what makes you think this guy’ll still be here?” Mike’s high voice interrupted her thoughts. 

She stopped in front of the door, on which someone had, many years ago, spray-painted the words “Winchester Arms.” Mike had told her it was the name of a bar in a pre-outbreak zombie movie, and though Tess had never seen the movie in question, she appreciated the black humor that had driven the original tagger. “I don’t. But if he’s not, we can find out where he is.”

She gave a complicated series of knocks on the peeling wooden door and it swung open. “Hey, Jimmy.” She greeted the old-timer at the door, a powerful-bodied man whose right leg ended in a wooden peg. He was a grizzled veteran in his fifties, a former marine who’d survived two tours in Afghanistan perfectly intact before the outbreak. He’d been with the military when they’d carved the Boston quarantine zone out of the chaos of rioting citizens against the encroaching infection that wouldn’t stop spreading, no matter what they tried, but he’d lost the leg fifteen years ago on a routine patrol in the bombed-out financial district, when a simple misstep pitched him downhill onto a piece of dirty rebar that pierced his calf. He might have kept it, except that the accident happened during a time when access to antibiotics was difficult at best, and what was available was only being given to the top brass and VIPs, not ordinary grunts like Jimmy. When the wound had turned gangrenous, they’d taken his leg and turfed him out of the military into the civilian population, where he’d only been eligible for half rations due to his disability. The bitterness of being abandoned by the organization he’d served faithfully for half his life plus a natural enterprising streak had kept him alive and led him to open this place.

The man gave her a nod. “Tess.” His eyes narrowed when he saw Richie. “Don’t want no trouble tonight.”

She smiled grimly. “This is a business trip, Jimmy.” She palmed two ration cards and pressed them into his hand. “You know I’m good for damages.”

He paused, then shrugged and moved out of her way. “Check your weapons with the kid.”

The Winchester Arms wasn’t really a bar, although it was possible to buy various types of alcohol, from a bitter, house-brewed ale to sketchy distilled liquors made by enterprising moonshiners from whatever scraps they could gather—potato peels, corn, fruit—and which a person drank at their own peril. The official FEDRA permit, displayed prominently next to the front door, said this place was an eating establishment, and Jimmy was careful to keep a menu that consisted of mystery cans (usually dog food, ten ration cards), MREs (twelve ration cards), and suspicious sausages (one ration card). Jimmy’s prices were so outrageous that no one bought the food here except the sausages, but considering the sources of cheap, available meat around here, Tess wouldn’t touch one of those with a ten-foot pole. At best it would be rat, or dog. At worst…well. She knew that overzealous FEDRA inspectors poking around the Winchester Arms and its business tended to disappear.

Jimmy still had friends inside the FEDRA hierarchy, and that in addition to his willingness to bribe the right people meant that the Winchester Arms had become a black market clearinghouse of sorts. Scavenging outside the walls of the QZ was strictly forbidden, as was smuggling goods into the city or moving contraband within the zone, but the reality was that the QZ needed those things and as long as you weren’t causing too much trouble and didn’t get caught outside the walls, FEDRA tended to turn a blind eye.  

The Winchester Arms, and other places like it, was where people like Tess made most of their living.

At the end of the hallway she handed her switchblade over to a dirty-faced ten-year-old girl who handed her a chit for it. Civilians weren’t allowed to carry firearms in the zone—Tess kept her guns stashed in the underground smuggling tunnels that they used to move around the zone and into the world beyond the walls—but her knife was like one of her own appendages. Being without it, even for a few minutes, made her palms itch. Mike grudgingly held out his cosh, a worn pocket of black leather with lead weights sewn into it, and the girl stowed it in another cubby behind her. 

“That too,” she said to Richie, wiping her runny nose on the back of her hand and pointing to the length of chain he had wrapped around his waist.

“Ah, come on…” he protested.

Tess cut him off. “Give it to her.” Her tone brooked no argument. Richie’s mouth snapped shut and he awkwardly unhooked the chain with his good arm and slammed it down onto the table in front of the girl. Tess didn’t miss Mike’s eye roll.

She stepped into the main room and automatically picked out Jimmy’s guards from the assembled crowd. There were five today, three stationed around the perimeter of the room and two roaming, big men who carried automatic rifles and weren’t shy about using them. Their presence tended to keep petty squabbles to a minimum within the confines of the bar. The Winchester Arms was neutral territory, and it wasn’t unusual to share a drink with a rival who’d try to kill you tomorrow out on the streets. It took big balls to make a scene in front of Jimmy’s enforcers, but Richie had said the man who’d broken his arm had done it here in front of everyone. 

Richie was scanning the crowded tables, some where people were just sharing a friendly drink, others where serious business was being conducted. Their entrance didn’t elicit much notice. Tess saw Richie’s eyes light up with petty spite. “There he is! That’s the guy who broke my fuckin’ arm!” Heads turned as he pointed to a bearded man drinking alone, and then he smiled smugly and put his hand around her waist, pulling her toward him in front of the whole goddamned bar.

 _No._ That possessive hand was the last straw, and in an instant whatever hold Richie had on her evaporated. She spun around and punched him right in the nose; there was a satisfying crunch as it broke under her fist. 

Richie dropped like a stone to the floor, howling, and as he fell, an orange plastic prescription bottle fell out of his pocket and rolled to a stop against her booted foot. Tess felt the world contract into the space between her fingers and the bottle as she knelt and picked it up to read the label. 

It was a bottle of Vicodin, prescribed to one Hazel Butts. She recognized it from a pickup they’d made three days ago; that scavenger, Bill, had made a stupid joke about the name. The bottle had contained nearly fifty of the little white tablets, each worth a hundred times their weight in bullets. More, maybe. Opiates were becoming exceedingly rare, and she hadn’t seen any Vicodin in years. She’d gotten a hell of a deal from Bill when she’d traded the pills for a Mossberg 500 pump-action shotgun and fifty shotgun shells. She’d sell each pill for ten ration cards apiece and make a fortune. The bottle was light, and by the rattle when she shook it, only a few pills remained. 

In a single moment of clarity, every delay Richie had caused, seemingly through incompetence, flashed through her mind. All the plans that had gone wrong lately, meetings he’d been there for, replayed from a new perspective. She’d wanted proof of his betrayal, well, here it was. She felt like her mind was clear for the first time in months. Son of a bitch! How had she overlooked it for so long? White rage surged through her. 

She shifted to one knee beside him and shook the pill bottle in front of his face while she twisted his ear cruelly enough to make him cry out. “I know you’ve been stealing from me. I should kill you for this, but considering our past…” She cuffed him hard on the side of his face. “I ever see you in this part of town again, you’re dead.” She straightened up again. “We’re done with him. Take care of it,” she murmured to Mike, who nodded. She turned toward the rifle-toting guard who was hurrying over to her and said, holding her hands in the air, “No more problems here. Just letting one of my employees go.” 

“Tess!” Richie’s voice was thick, his throat clotted with blood. “I don’t know where those came from! I swear!”

“Shut up.” She kicked Richie hard with the toe of one boot as Jimmy’s guard stopped and threw an uncertain look toward the doorway behind her. 

Jimmy’s voice boomed in the now-silent room. “Nobody saw anything.” Tess didn’t turn around, but she breathed a silent sigh of relief when she heard his wooden leg stumping back along the hallway to the front door. Just because she was a regular didn’t mean he wouldn’t take her ass out if she was causing too much drama; she’d seen him kill other people for less.

“You gotta believe me!” Richie was trying to get up, slipping on his own blood.

“Get this trash out of here, Mike.” She stepped past Richie toward the man he’d pointed out, the one who’d broken his arm earlier. His dark, amused eyes followed her, had been following her since she walked through the door. He was big, that was good. The way he was leaning back in his chair didn’t hide his powerful shoulders, or the muscular forearms revealed by the rolled-up sleeves of his shirt. He sat with one ankle propped across his knee, and she could see that the knees of his jeans were ripped but carefully mended. He was old, though. Not quite as old as Mike, but maybe as old as her dad would have been. Still, she had respect for the old timers, the ones who’d had established lives before the outbreak. The ones who’d made it this long had been the hardiest and most ruthless survivors, and the steel in this man’s eyes told her that he was no different. 

“I need a new man on my crew. Interested?” she said, without preamble.

The corners of his eyes crinkled as his mouth quirked in an almost-smile. “Might be.” He gestured to the seat beside him. “I happen to be between employers at the moment.”

Tess nodded as she sat down and tried to ignore the way his deep drawl made her think of warm places. Behind her, Richie howled in protest as Mike none-too-gently escorted him from the establishment.

The man at the table leaned back with an easy stretch and hooked a cracked ceramic mug from the shelf behind him, never taking his eyes off her. “Bourbon,” he said, by way of clarification, as he poured a generous finger of alcohol into the mug for her. 

Tess inclined her head and took a deep swallow, closing her eyes as the harsh liquor burned a path down her throat. When she opened them he was still watching her, a hint of a smile playing around the corners of his mouth. 

“You know who I am?” 

He shrugged. “Tess Callaghan. Word gets around. You and your crew pretty much run things on this side of town.”

“You think you’ll have any problems taking orders from me?” She said it casually, but a lot hinged on his reply.

His hazel eyes narrowed, then he shrugged again. “Long as you’re not givin’ bad orders.”

She raised one eyebrow. It was a unique answer. “Alright.” So. He wasn’t the type who’d do anything for a payday. That could be a good or a bad thing. She’d have to keep a close eye on him until she figured out what made him tick. She looked him over again, more carefully. Up close, he wasn’t quite as old as she’d thought and he wore a cracked wristwatch, which in itself was odd. Tess couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen someone wearing a watch. In the zone, the PA announcements kept time for you and outside you judged by the sun. The watch was an anachronism, a relic of the time before, something that would be of little use even if it worked, and by the badly cracked watch face she doubted his this one did. She took another drink then said, “You new to Boston? My people tell me you’ve been working as a hired gun, but I don’t think I’ve seen you before.”

He shrugged laconically. “I been here long enough to know my way around.”

She waited for him to add more, then finally said, “You got a name?”

He tipped his glass toward her. “Joel.”

“Okay, Joel.” She held her hand out to him. “You’ll be on a trial basis with reduced shares until I say otherwise. If I decide to make you permanent, you’ll get equal shares of every job you’re on.”

“Sounds fair.” He shook her hand. “Boss.” He cocked his head, his lips lifting behind the dark beard into a half-smile. “You offer a dental plan?”

She kept her involuntary smile to only a twitch at the corner of her mouth. “Cute.” She drained her bourbon without a shudder. 

“You ain’t the first who’s said so.” Joel’s smile had turned into a smirk. 

Tess stood up abruptly, her good mood vanished. After Richie, the last thing she needed on her team was another cocky asshole trying to get into her pants. “We’re done here. I can tell you’re not going to be worth the trouble.” It was almost curfew, but she could still get to the North End tonight, maybe she could hook up with Ed or hire a mercenary from one of the fight rings. She turned away.

“Hey, wait!” The intensity in Joel’s voice stopped her. She turned back toward him, and his face was grave, the smirk a distant memory. His right hand was at his left wrist, his thumb rubbing over the cracked face of that watch he wore like it was a talisman. “I want in. You won’t have any trouble from me.”

Tess stared at him for a long moment, then said “Tomorrow morning, six a.m. You know the apartments across from checkpoint five? Near the south side of Charlestown?”

He nodded. “I know ‘em.”

“Meet me in the lobby. Bring whatever weapons you’ve got.” She turned on her heel and walked to the edge of the room where Mike waited for her. 

“He’s coming on the outside pickup with me tomorrow,” she said to Mike, jerking her head back in Joel’s direction.

Mike frowned. “You think that’s a good idea? You’ll be alone with him.”

Tess handed her chit to the weapons check girl and waited for her knife. “I can handle myself.” She felt better with the weight of her knife in her palm, and she flipped the switch and examined the blade out of habit. 

Mike pressed his lips together and nodded. “Yeah. I know you can.” He took his cosh from the girl.

“Nice knife.” Joel had followed them to the weapons check desk, and was looking at her knife with appreciation. “I ain’t seen a double action switchblade like that in years.”

Tess held up the blade. It was a sturdy knife, lean, hard, and wickedly sharp, so familiar it was an extension of her own arm. “I keep it sharp.” The warning in her voice was barely concealed. _I'm the boss. Hands off._

He shrugged. “It suits you.”

The words were like a punch in the gut. There was no way the man could have known that her father said the same thing when he gave her that knife, fourteen years ago, but the words still stung her with the bitterness of her loss as if it had just happened yesterday. “Don’t be late tomorrow,” she said, almost snarling it at him. His eyes widened in surprise, but he said nothing else. She pressed the switch to retract the blade and slipped the knife back into her pocket, then stalked down the long hallway to the outer door without looking back. 

As she and Mike walked briskly down the nearly deserted streets, the frigid evening air seeped into her bones and her lungs ached with each breath. She was grateful for Mike’s circumspect silence as she struggled to seal the wound that Joel’s innocent words had ripped open in her.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to the beta readers for this chapter (RW, Michelle, and Mr. Mac) and to Ajax, the best damn research assistant in the business. I really should pay him more.
> 
> Just in case you're not familiar (because you live under a rock or whatever, I don't judge), the Winchester Arms comes from the movie _Shaun of the Dead_ , which I highly recommend if you haven't seen it yet.
> 
> A point of interest: The shotgun that Tess trades to Bill for the bottle of Vicodin is the same one that Bill eventually gives to Joel.


	2. Taking Care of Business

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joel meets the crew and Tess isn't sure he'll work out, but after six months they're working together like a well-oiled machine. We get a look at the final days of the city of Boston outside the QZ and journey with Tess and her family to their new life inside the zone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: This chapter contains several torture scenes. If that's a trigger for you, please walk on by.

**July 27, 2033, 4:54 am**

The clickers were coming to investigate the sound of the recent collapse but hadn’t spotted them yet. Tess and Ellie ran for cover behind a counter; it looked like this room had once been a cafe. Tess’s stomach twisted into a knot at the sight of the jagged teeth and ruined faces, that jerky fast walk. The inhuman squeals and clicks made her shudder. 

Ellie stared at her wide-eyed and panicky as Tess tucked her pistol back into her waistband. Tess just shook her head. She couldn’t explain to the girl that gunfire now would just draw more infected to their location, and besides, she was too low on ammo. It took more than one 9mm bullet to take down a clicker, and she had only eight rounds in her gun and nothing else on her. They were going to have to sneak past these things. 

The clickers were still coughing and jerking at the debris in the doorway, so she motioned Ellie to keep low to the ground and follow her, and then she moved around the end of the counter toward the opposite door. Joel had been the first person to show her that if you moved quietly enough, you could pass by even an alert clicker as long as you were careful. Ellie, despite her earlier clumsiness, seemed to recognize the gravity of the situation and moved slowly and silently, taking care with each step. Tess gave her a nod of approval as they eased out into the hallway. 

Which way? Tess could hear more clickers to her right, so she moved left, where a double door opened into a stairwell. She pushed the doors closed behind them with a barely audible click.

“Okay,” she whispered to Ellie. “Let’s see where these stairs lead.” She needed to get them out of the building as quickly as possible, there were too many places where they could be trapped and cornered by infected. 

“What about Joel?” Ellie whispered back.

“He can take care of himself,” she said. He always could. 

* * *

**January 2027**

The morning of Joel’s first day in her employment, Tess stamped her feet trying to stay warm in the drafty lobby, watching the snow come down thickly outside to blanket the street. They’d gotten three inches overnight, and it was showing no sign of letting up. Even though she was wrapped in a heavy wool peacoat and had a long wool scarf wrapped around her neck and head, she was still shivering when Joel stomped into the building, his beard and mustache clogged with snow. 

“Picked a nice day for it, didn’t you?” he said when he saw her.

She gave him a sour smile. Snowy days were good because the infected usually retreated to the dark, sheltered spaces where they made their dens and didn’t come out to hunt. Didn’t make it any more pleasant to be outside, though. “Follow me.”

She led him up to the fifth floor, to the apartment that served as their headquarters, where the rest of the crew waited. A welcome blast of heat hit her as she walked through the door and she sighed in relief, moving closer to the hot radiator. 

Joel wiped melting snow from his beard and said in mild surprise, “The boiler’s workin’ in this building?”

Tess smiled as she unwound the scarf from her face. “One of the perks. This used to be FEDRA administrative housing before they cleared out that building on Endicott. When they moved, someone conveniently forgot to switch off the gas to this building. We get hot water, too.”

“And I’m sure the government just keeps overlookin’ that out of the kindness of their hearts,” Joel said. 

“Everybody’s got their price.” This last was from Paulie, who’d stepped forward to check Joel out. “I’m the guy who figures out what that is.” 

“Paulie. My inside guy. He keeps the administration from looking too closely at what we do.” Tess gestured to Paulie by way of introduction. “This is Joel. He’s from…” Tess broke off and gave Joel a quizzical glance when she realized she knew next to nothing about his background.

One corner of Joel’s mouth lifted. “Texas, originally.” He shrugged and didn’t add any more.

“A Texas boy!” Paulie shook Joel’s hand with a smile. “I’m from Shreveport, myself. Louisiana. Aw, man. It’ll be nice havin’ another Southerner around for a change.” The wiry black man’s face practially oozed enthusiasm.

Tess was amused at the way Paulie’s entire demeanor changed when he talked to Joel, his neutral accent softening into the warm cadences that made Louisiana sound more like “Loozeeane.” Maybe he really was from Shreveport, but she’d also heard him claim Maine, Chicago, Los Angeles, and even London as his origin story in the past just as believably. Paul LaFontaine was a born hustler, one of those guys who could make anyone like him within the first few minutes of meeting him. She’d once pried it out of him during a late-night drinking session that he’d been a relatively successful stage actor in Boston at the time of the outbreak, and he’d transferred his skills, with a survivor’s tenacity, into the more nefarious practices of grifting and blackmail. Tess suspected he claimed so many birthplaces just so he could keep practicing his accents. 

“Man, I heard things got real bad down south of the Mason-Dixon, but Texas ‘specially was a shit show,” Paulie continued, giving Joel an empathetic wink. This was the way he got information out of people, so friendly and unassuming most people didn’t even realize they were giving anything up.

Joel didn’t rise to the bait. “Things got bad everywhere.” His face was a hard mask and his voice had turned to gravel in his throat. 

Paulie smiled and backed off, effortlessly changing track. “Let me introduce the rest of the team,” Paulie said. “That big, scary dude who looks like a mob enforcer is Mike. I think you mighta seen him last night. Funny thing, he actually was a mob enforcer back in the day. And that skinny little Mexican over there is Carlos.”

“I’m Honduran, you asshole,” Carlos said affably. He’d been a student at Boston College when the outbreak reached New England. “One of these days I’m gonna get you drunk and tattoo a map of South America on your face.”  

Paulie smiled hugely. “Can you feel the love, Joel?”

“Okay, enough, Paulie.” Tess sat down at the kitchen table and waited for the men to gather around her. “Joel, you’re with me today. We’re picking up a drop at the old Museum of Science.”

His eyes widened. “Ain’t that outside the zone?”

“Yeah. Where the fuck do you think our product comes from? Is that going to be a problem?”

“No, ma’am.” Joel’s voice was steady but he looked subdued, which was probably a good sign. Anyone who actually _wanted_ to go outside the QZ’s walls was either ignorant, foolish, or had a death wish. To Tess, it was a calculated risk. 

“Mike, Carlos, you’re moving product to the North End. Just the two crates of medical supplies, everything else can stay. But Robert’s got a buyer lined up for tomorrow, so he’s got to have the crates by tonight. Don’t fuck around with the military patrols out there by the old Coast Guard base. I want you guys back in Charlestown before curfew.”

Carlos shrugged. “If we get stopped, Mike will fake another heart attack. I will move the right crates off the truck, everything will be fine.”

“I don’t know why I’m the one who has to fake the heart attack,” Mike grumbled.

“Dios mio!” Carlos threw up his hands. “Just look at you, old man! Between you and me, who do you think collapses of a heart attack first?”

Mike looked so annoyed that Tess almost laughed. She covered it with a cough. “Paulie, do you have papers for them?”

“Sure do, boss-lady.” He handed Mike and Carlos new ID booklets. “My friend in Intake and Records does beautiful work.” He looked at Joel. “You on the official rolls as a citizen, Joel?”

The big man smiled wryly. “No. We didn’t exactly enter the QZ by legal means.” He pulled a blue leatherette booklet out of his pocket. “But I got papers.”

Tess filed that “we” away for later. Who had Joel come to Boston with? She examined Joel’s ID and shook her head as she passed it back to him. “It’s not great. The ink’s smudged and the cover isn’t the right material. It won’t hold up to close scrutiny. We’ll see about getting you a good set of papers as soon as possible. Paulie?”

“On it, boss. I’ll talk to my guy about it today.” He pulled out an old digital camera and snapped a picture of Joel. “Should be the usual price.”

Tess nodded. “Good, we’ll take it out of Joel’s cut. Alright, everyone be safe out there today.” She looked at Joel. “You ready?”

He gave her a curt nod. 

“Let’s do this.” Tess’s mind was on their route so she was surprised when Joel’s shoulder collided with hers on the way out the door; they’d both tried to lead the way into the hallway. Tess glared at the tall man. “Watch your step, Texas.”

He backed up a step and held out one hand toward the door in a semblance of politeness, but annoyance was writ large on his face. “After you.”

Tess shook her head to herself. If he couldn’t even follow her lead out the fucking door of the apartment, there was no way he’d be any use to her in the field. Despite what he’d said last night about needing the job, she mentally prepared herself for a long, exhausting day of asserting her will over yet another asshole with an ego the size of the moon. 

This guy was never going to work out. 

* * *

**July 2027**

“Watch your head.” Tess’s muscles bunched as she held the makeshift tunnel cover—an old wooden door, solid oak and heavy as fuck—while Joel crawled out into the open. 

He slipped his gas mask off and shook himself like a dog coming out of the water. “Need to clean that tunnel out,” he said, a frown carving deep lines in his face. 

Tess grimaced as she stowed her own gas mask in her backpack. “Yeah. I think that was one of Sandoval’s men.” The body they’d found spewing spores in the tunnel had clear bite marks on its arm, as well as a chest full of bullet wounds. Tess was glad someone had taken him out before he’d made it back into the QZ. “I’ll see if Paulie can score us one of those fungicide sprayers the military uses.”

“Good.” Joel’s drawl drew the word out into almost two syllables.

She waited for him to say more, but he didn’t, moving past her as he adjusted the straps on his backpack and then slid the magazine out of his pistol to check his ammo. Again. 

“You know, more bullets aren’t going to magically appear if you keep checking it.”

He snorted and gave her a sour look as he slammed the magazine back into place. “I don’t know why 9mm is so hard to come by right now. Should be easy to find.”

Tess’s mouth tightened. Joel was right. 9mm bullets were some of the most plentiful ammo out there, available for cheap from just about every black market trader and scavenger. That was the whole reason they both used 9mm pistols. The bullets didn’t have the stopping power of a .45 or even a .38, but they were easy to get. Usually. A month ago, their usual sources had dried up and by the time Tess realized it wasn’t something that was isolated to the Winchester, the ammo was almost impossible to find. She’d shared out her last box of 9mm ammo among the team yesterday, which meant that the seven bullets in her Sig and the five in Joel’s 1911 were all that stood between them carrying useful weapons and carrying useless paperweights. 

“Somebody’s been cornering the market,” she said. “And when I find out who there’ll be hell to pay.”

“Robert?” Joel said. 

Tess laughed scornfully. “Even Robert isn’t this dumb. He was just as pissed about it as we are, last time I talked to him. Everybody is. Whoever’s pulling this stunt is either too stupid to realize that his days are numbered, or too cocky to care.”

“Could be both.” Joel’s face was deadpan, but she’d come to recognize the way the corners of his hazel eyes wrinkled up when he was making a joke. 

_Why the fuck do I know what color his eyes are?_

She shook off the question like she did everything else. It didn’t pay to be too introspective in her line of work. Not in this world. She picked her way through the wrecked cafe and out into the street, where the skeletons of burned-out cars still rusted among a thick carpet of weeds. “Which one is it…” she murmured to herself, scanning the automobile graveyard. Since letting Richie go, she’d changed all her caches, all her secret drop locations, and it was a lot to keep straight. “Ah. There you are.” She smiled in satisfaction as she caught sight of the low arc of the VW Beetle, flecks of green metallic paint still clinging tenaciously to the rusting metal of the bodywork. “C’mon.”

The Beetle had been a good find, undisturbed because the driver’s side was snugged up against a brick wall, the front panel crumpled in from what had been a fatal crash, and the passenger side was obscured by decades of overgrowth. The car was barely recognizable as such unless you were looking for it. Tess pushed through the thick bushes to the broken-out passenger window and leaned in. She knew immediately that something was wrong. The former driver, or what was left of her, was still slumped over the steering wheel, a deflated airbag draped across her lap like a napkin, but the desiccated head, instead of staring at her with empty eye sockets, was now turned away. 

Grimly, she opened the center console to look for the merchandise that Bill was supposed to have left for her, pills and food this time. There was a single bottle labeled Vitamin B12 and a folded piece of paper.  

Tess straightened up and unfolded the note. 

_Tess,_

_I was almost out of this fucking town when I found this in my pocket. You owe me ten 9mm bullets or two shotgun shells on top of the 9mm your boy already paid me, but we can square up next month. I’d also take another bottle of that hooch your buddy Jimmy makes, or new batteries of any size. Forgot to tell that jackass you run around with._

_Bill_

She swore under her breath. 

“Problem?” Joel was still standing guard on the other side of the bushes. 

She fought her way back out onto the street, wiping the sweat from her forehead. It was sticky and hot today, and the prickling sweat pooling between her breasts only added to her disgust. She should have known as soon as she saw the body. Richie was always freaked out by corpses staring at him. For a survivor of the fungus apocalypse, he was surprisingly squeamish. 

“Well,” she said, “I’ve got good news and bad news.”

He raised his eyebrows, gazing at her impassively.

“The bad news is we lost this drop.” She didn’t miss how his mouth tightened in displeasure. 

“And the good?” His voice was a low growl.

“I know who’s got all the 9mm bullets. And who fucked us over.”

* * *

**November 21, 2013**

_Tess clutches the grubby white bear to her flat chest and chokes back a sob. Necessities, her dad had said. She can only pack things she needs. The suitcase on her bed is already full to overflowing with clothes and shoes, blankets and band aids and bottles of medicine. There’s no room for Artemis, but Tess can’t bring herself to put her down, this last, best connection to the mother who died in a car accident when Tess was nine. Her mother’s hands had touched the bear, tucked her into bed with Tess, and Tess can’t stand to give that up. Her shoulders shake as her tears soak into the dingy white fur._

_Angrily, she wipes a hand across her eyes. Her mom has been gone for three years now, and she has bigger things to deal with. She needs to let this go. She gently sets Artemis down on the bed, next to her phone and iPad, her favorite books and her jewelry. Her fingers are giving the soft, familiar fur one last caress when her dad comes into the room._

_“Tess, are you…” He stops when he sees the bear, and a spasm of pain crosses his face, so quickly she’s not sure it really happened._

_“I’m ready, Dad,” she says, leaning over to zip up her suitcase. She doesn’t look at the pile of discarded clothes on the floor or the dirty white bear on the bed._

_The man from the army had come yesterday with their papers._

_They’re allowed to bring one suitcase and one backpack or personal item apiece into the new quarantine zone, and they can bring anything except firearms and food items. Food has to be turned over to the people at the checkpoint for community distribution, but they’ll get extra ration cards in return. She knows that Jake’s suitcase is mostly full of canned food, while hers holds the medical supplies and bedding. Her dad’s suitcase is jammed with household items that might be useful to trade; things like tampons, toilet paper, and safety pins. She’s bringing two changes of clothes and two sturdy pairs of shoes aside from what she’s wearing, and there’s no room for more._

_Her dad smiles dryly at her bulging suitcase. “I guess you don’t have room for this either.” He’s holding a large box of kosher salt._

_She squints up at him. “Maybe in my backpack?” She unzips it, but she already knows there’s no room, with her hiking boots and a warm fleece jacket already stuffed in there, along with wool socks and as many rolls of gauze bandaging she can fit. “Isn’t that food, anyway?”_

_He shrugs. “Maybe. I don’t know how they’re classifying seasonings. It’s alright, pumpkin.” He leans down and kisses the top of her head, setting the salt on the bed next to Artemis. “Our ride will be downstairs in a few minutes. Do you have your knife?”_

_She takes it out of her pocket with pride. “Yeah.” She knows he’s already hidden the pistols he and Jake have been carrying in the wall safe._

_He nods. “Good. They’re supposed to let you keep it.” He runs a hand over his face, and Tess realizes that he looks bone-weary. Organizing entry into the quarantine zone for all three of them must have been more stressful than she realized. “But I’ve been hearing that there’s not a lot of oversight for this whole clusterf—“ He cuts himself off just in time and gives her an apologetic smile. “Anyway. There are rules, and then there’s what’s actually happening. I hope they won’t take it from you, but they might.”_

_Alarmed, Tess clutches the knife in her fist. “I won’t let anyone to take it away from me!”_

_His eyes flash with anger and he grabs her by the shoulders. “Listen to me. If someone at the intake center asks for that knife, you hand it over. We only have one shot at this, and if we don’t make it into that quarantine zone we’ll probably die out here.” His fingers grip her hard, and he shakes her a little. “Do you understand?”_

_She’s gripped by fear. This is the first time he’s laid things out in such stark terms for her, and she’s both pleased that he’s finally talking to her like an adult and scared out of her wits. Her tears are back, brimming beneath her lashes, but she looks him in the eye and nods. “Uh huh.”_

_“Uh…Uncle Liam, you said to tell you when it was one o’clock…” Jake’s voice trails off uncertainly from where he stands in the doorway, running one hand through his thick shock of black hair._

_Her dad gives her one last nod and steps back from her. “Let’s go.” He heads out, leaving Jake standing there looking uncomfortable._

_“You want some help?” he asks, as Tess shoulders her heavy backpack._

_“No. Just leave me alone.” She’s angry that Jake saw her crying, and she holds on to that feeling. It helps her forget her fear long enough to heave the suitcase off the bed and pull up the handle. “You better get your stuff.”_

_He looks nonplussed as she pushes past him, and Tess feels a momentary pang of guilt because she shouldn’t take this out on Jake._

_When they leave, her dad carefully locks the door behind them, and that small gesture makes her heart surge with hope. Maybe they’re not leaving for good. Maybe the doctors really will find a cure, and they’ll be able to come back home. She doesn’t say anything, but her steps are lighter and she even gives Jake a little conciliatory smile as they lug their heavy suitcases down the stairs._

_That all vanishes when they get downstairs and meet Lieutenant Harrington. “Come on, hurry!” he says when he sees them. He’s young, and his face beneath the thick plastic faceplate of his helmet is shiny with sweat. His eyes roll nervously up and down the street._

_“Jesus,” her dad mutters when he sees the truck that’s come for them. It’s a heavily armored fortress on wheels, long and box-shaped, with a turret and tiny windows near the top of the back compartment._

_“They must be expecting trouble,” Jake whispers._

_“I don’t have all day, Callaghan,” the lieutenant snaps. He’s keeping a wary eye on the gathering crowd down the street._

_He and his men are all wearing full body armor and helmets, and carrying big, scary-looking automatic rifles. He hustles them into the back of the waiting truck, where they’re squeezed in with other families and their belongings. All the faces she can see—young, old, men, women—are white and pinched with fear. Tess wonders if everyone here bought their way into a winning lottery number like her dad did._

_The truck lurches into movement before Tess can take a seat, and she throws herself onto the floor, half-falling over an older lady whose face is painted with a thick layer of makeup. “Sorry,” she mumbles._

_After a few bumpy minutes of awkward silence, the woman next to her says, “Well. I suppose we could introduce ourselves to each other. I mean, this is all so stupid, having to leave our homes when they’re so close to finding a cure…” She trails off and lapses into silence again when no one takes the conversational bait._

_Nobody else tries talking and the air in the truck is thick with everything that goes unsaid. Tess can’t stop staring at the guns the soldiers are carrying, and she’s thrown into the makeup lady again when the truck lurches to a halt. They can hear muffled cursing from the driver._

_“Get the fuck out of the way!” It’s Lieutenant Harrington’s voice, coming from the front. “God damn it. Just go. Go go go go go!” There’s the loud crack of a rifle, and something else: the moaning shriek of the infected, and the terrified cries of regular people. The soldiers in the back of the truck all hug the wall and point their guns out the windows—no, rifle ports—and start to fire. The sound inside the truck is deafening; everyone claps their hands over their ears. The woman beside her starts to scream. The truck lurches into motion again, and even though Tess’s ears already told her what was happening outside she still gasps in disbelief when she feels the the truck’s huge tires crunch over the first bump._

_Tess looks at her dad in panic and he reaches over and holds her hand tightly. She knows what those bumps mean—they’re driving over bodies, and by the screaming and crying, not all of them are dead when they go under the wheels. She feels sick to her stomach. How is this possible? How is this even happening? The panic is like a monster clawing at her chest._ I’m glad I’m in here and not out there. _The thought comes like a lightning bolt and makes her feel even sicker with guilt._

_Eventually the firing stops, the truck runs smoothly over normal pavement, and the sounds of the angry, frightened crowd die off. She learns later that the military has evacuated and cordoned off the approach to the intake center, but for now all she knows is that they’re driving through sudden, eerie silence that is almost as frightening as the mob._

_With a jerk, the truck lurches to a halt again and they’re disgorged into the bright November sun, in front of a heavily guarded gate. Behind the fence, Tess can see TD Garden, the big sports arena where her dad once took her to see the Boston Bruins play against the Edmonton Oilers. It looks like the military has taken over the facility and the adjacent train station and turned it into some kind of processing center, the main point of intake for the new quarantine zone. The big red and yellow sign in front of her reads:_

 

**STOP!**

YOU ARE ENTERING A DESIGNATED QUARANTINE ZONE

MYCOTOXIN 

LEVEL 4

CONTAINMENT

PROTOCOLS

REPORT TO INDUCTION STATION BEFORE PROCEEDING

ALL PERSONS MUST BE CLEARED BY MEDICAL STAFF

BEFORE ENTRY IS ALLOWED INTO QUARANTINE ZONE

 

_They’re being waved into a small open area just beyond the open gate, where their group is joining a busload of other people. Armed soldiers are posted in two guard towers on either side of the fenced area, which has a booth that says:_

 

**FEDRA**

FEDERAL DISASTER RESPONSE AGENCY

**INCIDENT SECURITY FORCE**

ADMISSIONS

WAIT UNTIL CALLED TO BOOTH

 

_There’s a single exit, a turnstile in the fence opposite the gate, and beyond that a long line snakes through the parking lot on its way to the arena through a multitude of fences and popup tents._

_Her dad turns angrily to Lieutenant Harrington and says, “The deal was you bring us straight inside, no waiting.”_

_“Everyone has to go through processing, nothing I can do about it,” he says._

_Tess has never seen her dad so angry. “You little shit. I paid you a million fucking dollars, so you better—“_

_Lieutenant Harrington laughs, but there’s a note of despair in it. “You think your money means anything now? Look around you, man!” He gestures wildly to the terrified mass of humanity waiting for entrance to the quarantine zone. “I got more people to pick up.” And with that, he turns on his heel and jumps up into the waiting armored truck, leaving them standing alone on the cracked asphalt._

_Her dad is staring after Lieutenant Harrington and the naked fear on his face is the scariest thing Tess has ever seen. She looks at Jake and clutches his hand and even though he’s surprised he squeezes her hand back. Hard. And suddenly Tess feels a tiny bit better. Jake’s just as scared as she is, but knowing that she’s not alone in her fear somehow makes it easier to manage._

_“Okay, kids. Let’s go.” When she looks back at her dad, his face is confident and determined again, the expression she’s so familiar with, and that moment of fear she saw is only a memory._

_They follow her dad into the group of people waiting beyond the gate, and it closes behind them, locking them into the small yard. The crowd in front of the booth isn’t organized into a single line, but with six FEDRA workers processing people through, it shrinks quickly as one by one people pass through the turnstile, and soon they’re facing a tired woman in the sealed booth who asks to see their ID and papers. Her dad slides the lottery paperwork and their IDs into the drawer in the thick plexiglass window and Tess’s heart beats hard with anxiety while the woman examines them with purple-gloved hands._

_After what feels like an eternity, she slides the documents back into the drawer and nods. “Everything’s in order here. Just follow the signs when you get through the turnstile.”_

_Tess is still holding Jake’s hand. She’s afraid she’ll start crying like so many of the other kids here are doing if she lets go._

_When they get to the turnstile, her dad says, “Okay, one at a time. I’ll go first, and then Tess. Jake, you bring up the rear.”_

_Tess feels a sense of finality as she pushes the cold metal of the turnstile, like she’s stepping out of one life and into another. She can’t go home, and she’ll never see the things she left behind again. This turnstile only goes one way._

* * *

**July 2027**

Richie wasn’t hard to find; people talked when you applied the right persuasion. A few hours and five ration cards later, she knew that he’d set himself up in a building on N. Washington, just at the foot of the Charlestown bridge and within sight of one of the busiest checkpoints in the zone. It wasn’t a terrible choice, Tess grudgingly admitted to herself. Any disturbance they made trying to get to Richie would bring down twenty soldiers on their heads. She felt Joel’s eyes on her as she leaned casually against the wall of the crumbling building opposite and chewed her lip, trying to decide their best course of action. 

Finally, she sighed. “I count five.” There were two men loitering just a little too casually near the building’s entrance, and three separate men had come from inside to check in with them. Where the hell Richie had come up with the means to pay five guards was a mystery for another time.

“You wanna get the rest of the crew?” 

Tess considered it briefly. Their odds would be considerably better if Mike, Carlos, and Paulie joined them, but she finally shook her head. “When he finds out I was looking for him, he’ll do a runner. We need to get to him before that happens.”

Joel grunted in agreement. “They ain’t gonna just let us waltz in the front door.”

“That’s why we’re going through the window.” Tess jerked her chin toward the alley across the street, where a fire escape clung to the wall. 

He nodded. “Trick’s gonna be gettin’ into that alley without them noticin’.”

Tess narrowed her eyes in thought, but before she could say anything, a bright gout of flame engulfed the checkpoint gates down the street. The concussion from the explosion almost knocked her off her feet. “Shit!”

They both crouched for cover at the sound of rifle fire as FEDRA soldiers poured out of the tiny guard building like hornets whose nest had just been poked.

“Goddamn Fireflies,” Joel grated. He was glaring at the mess with an angry expression that Tess couldn’t begin to understand. Despite working with the man on an almost daily basis for the past six months, she still knew very little about him, except that she could trust him to get her back in a fight. Contrary to her first impressions of him, he was deferential to her and polite to a fault, and he never used three words when one would do. After half a year, she still didn’t even know his last name or where he lived, but she knew that his reaction to the Fireflies was always one of anger that bordered on hostility. 

While he was watching the firefight, his jaw clenching, Tess saw what he missed. “Joel. Look.” The men at the entrance had ducked inside for cover. “Now’s our chance.”

He gave her a nod, the Fireflies forgotten for now. At her unspoken signal, they made a break for the alley, keeping their bodies crouched low as they ran. Tess flinched as a stray bullet whined and hit the pavement near her feet, but then they were across and she sucked in deep breaths to calm her pounding heart.

She squinted up at the fire escape, but it was a good three feet above her head. “Come on, give me a boost here.”

Joel braced himself and made a cup with his hands against his thigh. She stepped up, balancing herself with one hand on his shoulder while his muscles flexed to lift her up. Straining to reach, she finally hooked her hand around the bottom rung of the ladder and pulled. The thing didn’t move. Tess swore under her breath and jerked on the ladder again, but it was stuck tight. 

“Come on, you fucker.” She grunted as she grasped the rung with both sweaty hands and twisted at the waist to pull with as much of her body weight as she could. With a metallic shriek, the rusty ladder finally pulled free and dropped down to the street, taking Tess with it. They both lost their balance and Tess heard Joel grunt when she accidentally dug her elbow into his stomach.

_Shit, that was too loud, they’re going to be all over us,_ she thought. She held her breath for a tense moment, but it seemed that their luck held; the firefight was still underway, and the gunfire had masked the noise of the ladder. 

Her second thought was, _Shit_. She was lying on top of Joel, and his face was just inches away from hers, his eyes crinkled into a wry smile. A wave of heat that had nothing to do with the July sun made her skin prickle and her stomach tremble. 

Tess jumped up like she’d been burned. _God damn it_. After Richie, she’d taken Mike’s advice and kept away from her employees. She hadn’t been a nun, she had needs like every woman did, but she wasn’t going to scratch that particular itch with someone she worked with. Up till now, she’d successfully kept space between them, she’d never touched him more than was necessary. As attractive as he was—in a rough and tumble kind of way—his age and his personality had made it easy for her to resist him. 

Joel had picked himself up and was dusting himself off. She found her eyes drawn to the vee of his button-down shirt, where a few coarse chest hairs peeked out, vivid black against his sun-browned skin. She swallowed.

“You plannin’ to stand here all day?” 

The surly tone in his voice snapped her out of her trance. Tess shook her head and pushed the memory of that hard muscled body beneath her firmly out of her mind. “Just waiting to make sure you hadn’t broken anything, old man,” she said with asperity.

He snorted.

Without waiting for more of a reply, Tess started up the ladder.

She wondered if he was checking out her ass as she climbed, then she slapped herself mentally for wondering. _Jesus Christ, Tess. Get it together. We have more important things to think about right now._

The window on the first landing was locked, so she waited for Joel to join her. “Think you can open that?”

He laughed scornfully and pulled one of his ugly homemade shivs out of his pack. 

The first time Tess had seen him holding something that looked like it was made of half a pair of scissors and some duct tape, she’d laughed and said, “What the hell is that supposed to be?” 

He’d just shrugged. “Got tired of ruinin’ good blades tryin’ to open doors. These are plenty sharp to get the job done and I don’t mind too much when they break.”

This had been early on, before she’d decided whether to keep him on permanently, but she remembered thinking that a man who was good at opening locked doors would definitely be an asset to her crew. 

“I never have gotten the hang of breaking and entering,” she said as he fiddled with the locked window jamb. “No matter how many times J—“ She stopped, shocked at herself. She’d almost said Jake’s name, and it wasn’t like her to forget herself like that. A needle of pain stabbed through her chest at the memory of big hands that had looked so clumsy but were gentle and dextrous enough to coax any lock open.

“There we go.” The window slid open. 

Tess breathed a sigh of relief. Joel either hadn’t noticed or was ignoring her slip. Either way was fine with her. She had days like this sometimes, when the memories were too close to the surface, but that didn’t mean she had to like it. 

The window looked into a tiny bedroom, currently unoccupied. As Joel followed her through the window and they made their way through the empty apartment, she pulled her knife from the pocket of her jeans and flicked it open. It wasn’t loud, but even the tiny noise the spring made could be noticed by someone on the alert. Better to be prepared.

The door was ajar, so she eased it open as gently as possible. It opened into a long hallway lined with more apartment doors, and Tess shook her head in irritation. With five or six more floors above them, it was going to take forever to track down exactly where Richie was holed up. She leaned forward and murmured in Joel’s ear, “Need to get one of them to tell us where he is.”

Joel nodded grimly. He knew exactly what she meant. And that was why Tess chose him as her partner more days than not. Joel was reliable and he didn’t shy away from the messy stuff, but he didn’t get off on it either. 

Without saying anything else, they moved together into the hallway, Tess taking one direction and Joel the other. She moved in a fast, silent crouch along the wall and peeked her head around the corner. One of Richie’s men was ambling down the hallway, facing away from her. She felt adrenaline dump into her system as she overtook him from behind. His muscles bulged under his tight gray t-shirt, and he was tall enough that she had to jump up on his back and cling there like a monkey while she plunged her knife into the side of his unprotected neck.

The man fell with only a faint choking sound, bleeding his life out onto the matted carpet from his severed jugular vein. She knelt and wiped her blade clean on his shirt. 

_Can’t leave him here for anybody to find._ She bent over and grabbed him by his bootheels, but this guy was over six feet of bulky muscle, and easily weighed 250 pounds. She could barely shift him by herself, strong as she was. When she headed back toward Joel, she found him dragging a body toward the open apartment door, a look of utter disgust on his face. The man was clearly dead, his neck twisted at an impossible angle.

Tess swore. “I said we needed information.”

“Yeah.” Joel said shortly as he heaved the body out of the hallway. “I ain’t deaf. I had him in a headlock, but this idiot panicked and broke his own goddamn neck.”

She blew out her breath in irritation. “Be more careful with the next one. Come on, come help me with some heavy lifting.”

He glared at her, but followed her down the hallway to where she’d left her body. Before they were halfway there, a voice shouted, “Oh, shit! Carmichael! Espinoza! We got a problem!”

“Fuck.” Tess spat it from between gritted teeth as she rounded the corner at a sprint, the element of surprise now her best option. She took in the man kneeling over his fallen comrade and had a split second to register his look of surprised terror as she came down on him like a fury, leaping on him and stabbing him in the neck until he stopped fighting her and slumped over the first man. 

Footsteps were pounding up the stairs. She leapt up, spun around, and grabbed Joel by the elbow. “Come on!” They ran back to the empty apartment and slammed the door shut behind them.

“Does it lock?” she asked frantically.

“No, it’s busted. Help me with this.” He started dragging an entertainment center, old flat screen TV and all, in front of the door to block it. 

Tess ran to the other end and pushed against the heavy, dusty wood just as a fist thudded into the door from the other side. 

“We know you’re in there, and you’re gonna pay for killing our friends!”

“Should we get out of here?” Joel’s voice was low, almost a whisper. 

“No. Richie will just go to ground and then it may take us too long to find him again. We take care of this now.”

Joel’s shrugged. “You’re the boss.”

They both knew the entertainment center wouldn’t hold for long, so without another word to each other, they split up to find hiding places in the apartment. Tess secreted herself in the bedroom closet behind the rack of dusty old clothes and crouched, ready to spring.

There was a tremendous crash as the two men trying to break into the apartment finally managed to push the entertainment center over, sending the TV and all of the various electrical components tumbling to the floor in a mess of shattered glass and brittle black plastic.

Tess breathed deeply and slowly to keep her heart rate down and waited. The silence stretched into an eternity that was finally broken by the sound of stealthy footsteps. She held her breath as he walked right by her, too distracted by the open window on the other side of the room to think of looking past the half-closed closet door. She slipped out and crept up on him as he stared at the window.

“Goddamn. Must’ve come up the fire escape,” he muttered. “Probably long gone.”

Shit. He was turning around. In a flash, Tess reversed the knife in her grip so the blade pointed up along her own forearm. He was drawing a deep breath, maybe to shout to his friend, but it turned into a gasp of surprise when he saw her so close behind him. With a vicious swipe of her arm, Tess slashed the blade across the front of his throat. 

He clutched at her as he went to his knees and hot blood sprayed from his severed carotid artery.

“Fucking let go!” she hissed, kicking him away from her. “Ugh.” She was a mess, spattered with blood from head to toe. This was why she liked to sneak up on people from behind. She grimaced as she wiped ineffectually at the blood on her face. Going back to the closet, she grabbed a faded purple blouse and wiped herself off with it as well as she could before she went looking for Joel. 

They were in the kitchen. Joel was facing off, hands in the air in front of his chest, against a burly man with a dirty orange beard who was holding a nine-inch hunting knife on him. Before Tess could even think about drawing her pistol, the man lunged forward. Joel made a lightning-fast downward movement with his hands and caught the man's wrist while he jumped back with both feet to get his body out of range of the knife. 

Orangebeard growled in rage. “You’re gonna die, fucker!” 

“Not today,” Joel said. When Orangebeard tried to thrust forward again, Joel kept his hands gripped tightly around the man’s wrist as he stepped smoothly aside, turning his body and crouching to slot his shoulder under the shorter man’s armpit. 

The man howled as Joel straightened up, pulling down on the hand with the knife and pressing his shoulder into the meat of the man’s triceps muscle, using it as a fulcrum to lock the other man’s elbow into a painful hyperextension.

“Drop it,” Joel said, his voice like gravel through gritted teeth. He pulled down harder on the man’s wrist.

“Okay! Okay, man!” The knife clattered to the floor and Tess smiled grimly as she took her hand off her pistol grip. Joel kicked the knife across the room. 

Tess walked closer, so she could catch the man’s eye. “Where’s Richie?”

“Uhhhh…” He waffled as sweat streamed down his forehead into his matted beard, then gave a yelp as Joel’s hands increased their downward pressure once again. “Fuck you! I ain’t telling. He’s…he’s…” The inexorable downward motion did not stop, and there was a crunching pop from the man’s elbow that made him scream. 

Tess cocked her head. “Let’s try this again. Where’s Richie?”

He was significantly more compliant after that. It turned out that Richie was in an apartment on the fourth floor, and he was alone with a woman. There were no more guards between them and their quarry. 

As they jogged up the stairs to the fourth floor, Joel said, “Shoulda let me kill him.” His face was set in a disapproving frown.

“No point. He’s going to be out of work soon anyway.”

“He’s a loose end. May come back and bite you.”

“Or maybe he spreads the word that I’m still on my game and people should stay the fuck out of my way.” Tess wasn’t worried about the man coming after her. He didn’t have the balls. 

“Huh.” By the surprise in Joel’s voice, he hadn’t considered the bigger picture. He was comfortable with the day-to-day violence, but the politics of running an organization like hers were outside his understanding. 

The door to Richie’s apartment wasn’t even locked and they walked in like they owned the place. Richie was standing in the living room with his pants down around his ankles, and a skinny blonde girl was kneeling in front of him, her head bobbing up and down on his dick. 

When the door opened, he turned his head lazily, barely opening his eyes. “I said to leave me the fuck—“ 

He saw Tess.

“Hi, Richie.” Tess bared her teeth at him. He twisted and tried to pull his pants up, backing away from the confused girl on the floor.

“Get out,” Joel growled at her in his most menacing tone as he picked up a baseball bat that was propped next to the door. Her eyes widened and she scrambled to her feet , not saying a word as she slipped out. 

“Guess we caught you with your pants down,” Tess said casually.

“Tess! What the fuck are you…I mean…” He pulled his pants back up to his waist, which was just fine. The sight of his wilting erection was making her feel sick and angry anyway. She couldn’t believe she’d ever felt anything but disgust for his sorry ass.

They stood there, the three of them frozen with tension, for a moment that seemed to stretch into an eternity. Richie’s eyes flicked nervously from her to Joel to the table, just out of reach, where a couple of pistols lay. 

Tess broke the silence. “I was going to overlook you setting up your own operation. I really was.”

“I set it up under Robert’s protection!“ Richie was sweating, but that explained why he wasn’t desperate. It also explained where he’d gotten his henchmen. He’d always gotten along well with Robert, and Robert was great at making people promises. “I’m working for him!” His smug smile made Tess’s blood boil.

Joel shot a sidelong glance at her, silently asking for direction. Tess inclined her head slightly and Joel exploded into movement, moving forward with his bat swinging. He shattered Richie’s kneecap with one blow.  

“What the fuck, you crazy bitch!” Richie screamed. He fell to the floor in agony. “Robert’s gonna fucking kill you!”

“Shut up.” Tess knelt on the floor next to him. “Stealing those pills from me and fucking up my drop was one thing, but did you really think I wouldn’t find out about the ammo?” She could see the blood drain out of Richie’s face.

“W—what ammo? What are you—“

She flicked her eyes at Joel again and leaned back out of the way while he delivered a bonecracking kick to Richie’s ribs.

“F—fuck…” Richie gasped. 

“The 9mm. You fucking idiot. How long did you think Robert’s protection would last when he finally found out you’re double-crossing him?”

“Robert knows! Robert knows about everything!” he panted. 

Tess sat back on her heels in surprise. If that was true, if this ammo hoarding wasn’t some cockamamie get-rich-quick scheme of Richie’s, but a power grab from Robert, then she had bigger problems to deal with. And she’d badly misjudged Robert when she’d talked to him earlier. No. That wasn’t possible. She’d seen how angry Robert was about the missing ammo. Richie had to be lying. 

“Bullshit.” At her nod, Joel joined her on the floor and took hold of Richie’s right hand, bending his little finger backwards until Richie yelled again. “Now tell me where it is.”

“I…I can’t…” He screamed as Joel jerked his finger back. Tess could hear the bone snap. Joel took hold of Richie’s ring finger. “Okay! Okay! I’ll tell you! Just stop!”

Tess nodded to Joel again and he backed off. “Where.”

“It’s in…a train car at…the station yard…North Station,” he moaned, breathless with pain. 

“Jesus,” Joel muttered. The train station had started off as part of the original intake center for the QZ, but it had been off limits for at least five years, and it was probably crawling with infected. 

“God damn it, Richie! Which one?” There were dozens of rusting train cars in the station yard. 

“F—fuck you.” He laughed, his teeth stained with blood. “You used to like it when I fucked you, baby.”

A white sheet of pure anger crashed through her mind. She stood, calm and ice-cold with rage. “You could have avoided this, Richie, but you’re just too stupid.” Then she drew her pistol and shot him in the head. 

“Hm.” Joel stood up again, a disapproving frown on his face. 

Tess’s jaw clenched. “What?” _I should have let you find out which train car he was talking about? I should have asked him more about who else was involved? Go ahead and say it, old man. I dare you._ She glared a challenge at him. 

“Your ex-boyfriend was a real asshole,” he said.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! So, it turns out these multi-timeline chapters are quite a bit longer than my usual. The good news? Big, fat chapters you can really sink your teeth into! It's like getting four chapters in one! The bad news? They're taking me longer to write than I anticipated. I will do my best to stick to the 2-week publishing window, but work is very busy at the moment and obviously that cuts into my lucrative fanfic writing time. 
> 
> Since there'd be no easy way to coordinate the timing of drop-offs and pickups with scavengers like Bill, who live outside the zone, I imagine Tess has set up drop caches for her trusted dealers near the QZ walls. Occasionally she manages to catch some face-to-face time with these itinerant folks, but if she misses them, she picks up the drop and leaves barter goods as payment. Communication is mostly via written messages left with the caches. Due to their sensitive nature, these caches must be secret and well hidden. Tess is very annoyed that she's had to come up with all new hiding places for all of her outside contractors.
> 
> As we saw in Pittsburgh, FEDRA couldn't let everyone into the quarantine zones. Not enough room, not enough supplies to go around. This is specifically why I chose to make Tess and her family upper-class one percenters, because you better believe that the rich would buy their way into safety before anyone started to realize that money has no value anymore. Her dad's money gets them inside via a rigged lottery, but once they're in, they're in the same boat as everybody else. There was originally a lot more to the Boston Intake Center scene to make that point (as Liam, Jake, and Tess transition from their old lives and into their new, they are stripped of all their possessions and clothing and witness other families being torn apart), but ultimately I felt that a one-way turnstile door told a similar story in a more subtle and succinct fashion. Also, this chapter was getting suuuuuper long. 
> 
> In the 2027 sections, Joel is brutal and efficient. The knife attack defense I recently learned at the dojo made it into this chapter the same night I learned it, and hopefully I've described it in a way that lets you visualize how it works. And we see the murky politics of the Boston underworld rear its ugly head. Robert just doesn't seem all that trustworthy to me, you know?
> 
> Lastly, Tess is starting to notice Joel in _that way_. It will be a while before she acts on it though.


	3. Fathers and Daughters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tess and Ellie run from infected in the museum. Mike's daughter is back in town and Tess and the team meet a familiar character. In the past, Tess's father, unable to keep his family fed on the short or nonexistent rations during the first year of the QZ, vows to make a change.

**July 27, 2033, 4:56 am**

Tess led the way up the stairs, wincing at every creaky board, but it sounded like they’d left all the clickers down beyond the double doors. She just needed to find a way out now. Her eyes fell on a length of heavy wood on the stairs, a splintered piece of railing about the size of a baseball bat. She picked it up and hefted it in her hands. 

She wanted to go back and find Joel.

_We ever get separated, you don’t come back for me._ She remembered her father’s urgent face as he said the words, the first time he’d taken her outside the QZ walls; they had been words she’d lived by for years, and they’d probably kept her alive more than once. 

Joel would be okay. He was fast and strong and experienced.

What if he got bitten? The tiny room in Tess’s heart where she kept her vulnerabilities flared white with pain at the thought. Not Joel. She wouldn’t lose Joel too. 

She glanced at Ellie; the girl’s forehead was glistening with sweat and her hair hung in lank tangles, her eyes still wide with adrenaline and fear. Tess swore to herself. She couldn’t leave Ellie alone, the kid was unarmed and totally out of her depth, no matter how much bravado she tried to put on. Tess stopped on the landing at the top of the stairs, peering into the gloom at the end of the long hallway. Was that an open door at the end of the hall? 

The red gleam of infected eyes was the only warning she had before the runner hiding in the dark beyond the door charged them, making garbled noises that sounded horribly like words, but ones she couldn’t quite understand. She pushed Ellie behind her and swung the heavy board into its knees with a speed born of desperation, sending the thing sprawling behind them.

She grabbed Ellie’s shoulder and pushed her toward the open door. “Move!”

She barely managed to shut the door behind them before the runner ran into it with a sick thud, beating the door with its fists and howling its frustration into the splintered wood. Thank god the infected didn’t have the coordination to use fucking doorknobs.

* * *

**August, 2027**

On the first of every month, Tess treated her team to a bottle at the Winchester. It was an easy way to bring them all together, let them catch up and blow off steam without having the pressure of a job looming over them. 

“One bottle of whiskey.” Paulie, standing beside her at the bar, nudged her shoulder. “And one sausage,” she added, rolling her eyes.  

Jimmy’s stoic bartender held up three fingers and Tess passed three ration cards to him. Payment up front was the house rule at the Winchester. She looked down to the other end of the bar where Mike’s daughter, Callie, was being chatted up by some scruffy guy. She poked Paulie in the arm. “Looks like Callie’s made another conquest.”

Paulie shook his head. “Man, I dodged a bullet there.” He grimaced. “She only wanted to fuck me ‘cause I knew where to get the good drugs, though.”

Tess nodded. “I think it was the right call, pulling her out of day-to-day and putting her on the farm runs. Seems to keep her out of trouble. Mostly.”

“It’s good that she’s clean now. Man, every time I went on a run with Mike back in the day I was afraid we was gonna find her dead in the street somewhere. Baby girl’s lookin’ fiiine these days, though. Maybe I oughta…”

Tess slugged him on the shoulder. “Don’t even think about it. If Mike didn’t rip your dick off, I would.” She glowered at Paulie.

Callie had been a thorn in Tess’s side ever since the day her mother had shown up, dumped her preteen daughter on Mike’s front doorstep, and disappeared for parts unknown. That had been back in ’17 or ’18, shortly after Tess had taken over the organization, and she’d been far too busy to babysit or make friends. She’d relied heavily on Mike’s guidance in those days, and as a result Callie had drifted, largely unsupervised, on the fringes of their world, until she’d fallen in with a group of older kids who ran drugs for the Swede, a smuggler in the North End who specialized in the procurement and distribution of mind-altering substances. 

FEDRA’s list of controlled substances was short, and included antibiotics, medical anesthetics, and some narcotics. Anything else people found, cooked, grew, or scavenged was met with a blind eye. It was possible, if you had the means, to spend your days off floating in a heroin daze, and as long as you managed to clock your hours on work days you’d still get your legal ration cards, the same as everyone else. Police evidence impounds were treasure troves for people like the Swede. Drug use was rampant in the Boston QZ, and Tess couldn’t blame anyone who wanted to escape this shitty reality for a few hours. She never touched the stuff herself. It was hard enough surviving when she had all her wits about her. 

When Mike had found out that Callie was running drugs for the Swede, he’d hit the roof. The fights between father and daughter had been frequent, loud, and acrimonious. In a last-ditch effort to build a relationship with his daughter, Mike had convinced Tess, against her better judgement, to start using the then-fifteen year old girl in their operation, just to keep her busy and away from her former friends.

It had gone alright, for a while, but Callie was one of those people who careened through life like a car with no driver, leaving wreckage in their wake. She’d show up for work high, or not at all. Or she’d show up sober and throw herself at Paulie or Carlos, threatening to tell Mike they’d molested her if they didn’t have sex with her. Or she’d disappear and be found a week later turning tricks for ration cards and smack. Mike had disowned her over and over again, and then begged Tess to give her one more shot every time she came crawling back.

When she was eighteen, she’d gone missing for two months. She never talked about what had happened or where she’d been, but after that she’d stayed sober and applied herself to training like a zealot, even giving up her ration cards for practice ammo. When the Swede’s lieutenants started disappearing, Tess hadn’t been particularly surprised. By the time Callie asked to take over the farm runs, all of her former friends were gone, along with a significant slice of the Swede’s organization. She’d given Callie the keys to their truck, over Mike’s strenuous objections, with no hesitation. She knew Callie could take care of herself, and as a bonus it would keep her far away from Mike so they wouldn’t be constantly at each other’s throats. Not to mention removing a daily headache for Tess herself.   

Tess looked back down the bar and shook her head. The guy talking to Callie had a cocky smile, but he looked harmless enough. He had no idea what he was getting into. 

Tess coughed as Jimmy’s bartender pushed a green bottle with a faded Jameson’s label and a greasy paper-wrapped sausage in a bun across the counter. Fucking summer cold. It had shown up almost a week ago and it wasn’t accommodating her usual ignore-it-and-it’ll-go-away method of dealing with colds. 

“Oh, thank god. Thanks, Tess. I’m starving.” Paulie snatched up the sausage and crammed it into his mouth.

“I don’t know how you can eat those things,” Tess said, suppressing a shudder. The sight of him eating the revolting thing made her feel sick to her stomach. She picked up the bottle and headed toward the back corner where Mike and Carlos had staked out a table. Callie would make her way over eventually. Joel was late. 

Paulie grinned through a partially chewed mouthful. “Mmm, mmm. Mystery meat. Good and good for you.” He raised his voice, declaiming to the bar in a rich, plummy accent, “Jimmy, my good man, you’ve outdone yourself on this batch. I regret that I have but one life to give for this sausage! Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight! For I ne’er saw true beauty till this night!”

Tess rolled her eyes as Paulie’s antics drew a smattering of laughter and applause from the gathered crowd. 

No one laughed harder than Jimmy, who shouted, “Give that man another!”

“You keep running your mouth off like that in here and you’re likely to become an ingredient in the next batch, idiot,” Tess said.

“Pfft. Whatever. What gets me free food only makes me stronger.” The bartender tossed a second paper-wrapped package across the room lie a football, and Paulie raised his arm and snagged it out of the air with ease, taking a bow when the crowd cheered. 

“I can’t take you anywhere,” she grumbled good-naturedly. They rejoined the group and Tess handed the bottle to Mike to pour while she sat down. 

 Joel materialized out of the crowd, limping slightly, the right side of his face a mass of swelling, bruised flesh. “Sorry I’m late.” 

“Nice of you to join us, Texas,” Tess said, keeping her tone dry. “You didn’t have to get all prettied up for me.”

He smiled, then winced with pain. “This? Shit, ain’t nothin’.” He took his seat gingerly, holding his side like he was protecting a cracked rib. 

“Madre de Dios, Joel. You do look like shit.” Carlos handed Joel a glass of whiskey, which the big Texan drained in a single swallow, sighing gratefully. He held the glass out for a refill.

“Slow down there, big guy. You caught up with our friend?”

Joel nodded and took another big gulp of whiskey. “Yeah. Turns out he had a few friends of his own. But I got what we needed. And they ain’t gonna be tellin’ anybody else.”

Tess smiled tightly, appreciating Joel’s discretion. The rest of the team didn’t know about Richie’s ammo cache yet, and she’d just as soon keep it that way until she figured out what she was going to do about it. Now that Richie was no longer around to intercept it, small arms ammunition was once again trickling into the QZ, albeit slowly. Still, if the other operators in the zone got even a whiff that she had a line on a huge store of it, she might as well paint a giant target on her back. No, she wanted to know exactly where Richie’s cache was and how much was there before she decided how to approach the whole mess. Not for the first time, she felt a pang of regret for killing Richie, at least before she’d extracted more information from him. She had no desire to grow her operation or upset the balance of power as it was now. In fact, she was tempted to walk away from the whole headache, just forget she’d ever heard about the cache in the first place, but that would leave her exposed to whatever chaos would ensue if players like Sandoval or the Swede, men with big operations who were always angling for more power, happened across it. 

There would be time to talk to Joel later and find out what he knew. But now it was time to get down to the business of drinking. She poured herself a drink and raised it. “Here’s to us.”

Mike frowned at the extra glass on the table. “We should wait for Callie.”

Tess shook her head. “She’s here. She’s chatting up another guy at the bar. Sit down,” she said as Mike started to rise. “She’s fine.”

He glowered at her but sat down again. “She’s my _daughter_ , Tess.”

_Yeah, and you were one hell of a shitty father._ The ungrateful thought crossed her mind before she could help it. Without Mike’s help, she wouldn’t be here today. But the truth was, Mike had been a better father to her than he ever had been to Callie.

Tess ignored the tension in Mike’s shoulders and raised her glass again. “C’mon. Who’s going to start?”

Joel rolled his eyes. “Time for the teambuildin’ exercise.” He appreciated the monthly drink, but Tess knew he hated this part. 

She smiled sweetly. “Thanks for volunteering, Joel.”

“Ahhh,” he sighed in disgust. He paused, considering, then tipped his glass toward Tess. “Here’s to that bullet of yours that took out that clicker a couple weeks back. I thought it was gonna eat my damn head.”

“That would’ve made you a lot less pretty, Texas,” Paulie said, flashing a flirtatious smile at the older man. Tess suppressed a smile. As far as she knew, Paulie wasn’t gay, he was just indiscriminate in his sexual appetites. He loved coming on to Joel just to see Joel squirm. 

Joel grunted and took another gulp of whiskey while Paulie cackled. 

Carlos raised his glass. “Here is to my new ID booklet. It stood up to very careful scrutiny this week.”

Paulie laughed. “See, I told you I wasn’t useless, son!”

Carlos rolled his eyes. “I never said useless. I said you couldn’t find your own dick with a microscope.”

“I’d prove you wrong right here, motherfucker,” Paulie laughed loudly, “Except I ain’t got enough time right now to have sex with everyone in this bar who’d want a piece of me. But I tell you what, we can have ourselves a regular old dick measuring contest tomorrow morning. Mike and Joel too. Loser has to give the winners a handie. Boss lady can do the measuring.”

“Paul, shut the fuck up,” Mike said.

At the same time, Joel mumbled, “No, thanks.”

Carlos just smirked.

“You wish, asshole,” Tess said. She suppressed another cough.

Paulie laughed from his belly, drawing more than a few eyes. 

“I’m going over there to see what the fuck’s taking so long.” Mike pushed back from the table and shouldered his way through the crowd toward the bar. 

Tess shook her head as she watched him go. There was no reasoning with him where Callie was concerned; it was like he thought he could make up for all the years of no-so-benign neglect by taking an interest now. Tess had no experience with kids, but even she knew it was too late for that. Mike would be better off just letting Callie do her own thing. 

She brought her attention back to the table and eyed Paulie as she sipped the harsh liquor in her glass. He was bright-eyed and twitchy, full of suppressed excitement. He always had a big personality, but he wasn’t usually so rambunctious. 

They weren’t done with the traditional round of toasts, but now that she was looking at him, he was practically bouncing in his chair. “All right, Paulie,” she said. “Out with it. What’s going on?”

Paulie made a show of finishing his drink before he leaned forward across the table. He never could resist drawing things out for dramatic tension. “I got a line on something big, boss,” he said in a low voice that didn’t carry past their table. 

“Oh?”

He looked around to make sure no one nearby was paying particular attention to them before he continued. “Now, it’s only a whisper, but I heard it from more than one source that there’s an abandoned stash just outside the QZ somewhere. A really big one.”

Tess felt her stomach sinking. She flicked her eyes at Joel, but his face was granite. “What kind of stash are we talking about?”

Paulie leaned even farther in, and the rest of them leaned forward until their heads were almost touching. “You remember when ammo was so hard to find? Word is, somebody was collecting it all in one place. Whoever finds that could take over this town.”

Tess sat back abruptly. Paulie was better than anyone she knew at finding out secrets, but if he was hearing rumors about the stash already they had even less time than she thought they did to figure out what to do about it. “Good work. We’ll look into it,” she said woodenly. Shit.

“Look into it?” Paulie’s resonant voice assumed its usual volume. “Fuck, this could be a game-changer! We should pour everything we got…”

“Keep your fucking voice down,” she hissed. 

His mouth snapped shut, but he scowled truculently at her. “Boss…”

Before Tess could remind him that this was not the time or the place, a familiar hoarse shout rang out from across the room. 

“Christ. What now?” Tess was up out of her chair and halfway across the room before Mike’s next bellow could bring Jimmy stumping back into the bar. 

“Get your fucking hands off me!” A man in an army-green coat—the one who’d been talking to Callie, she realized—was  restraining Mike, twisting his arm painfully behind his back while his huge biceps bulged and he snorted and bucked like a bull. 

“What’s the problem here?” Tess snapped. She looked around for Jimmy’s guards and saw two of them drifting in their direction. She didn’t have long to forestall a more serious confrontation. “You want to explain what you’re doing with—“ 

Callie stepped in front of her and delivered a stinging slap to Mike’s face. “Don’t you ever lay a fucking hand on me again, old man.”

Mike heaved his shoulders, but the stranger holding him had all the leverage, and he grunted in pain as his joints strained. “His hands were all over you—“

She slapped him again, harder this time. “I don’t _belong_ to you. I’m not yours to protect. Never. Again. You understand me?”

At this, Mike stopped struggling and sagged against the bar. “Callie…” 

The look of pure anguish in his watery blue eyes shocked Tess to her core. It was gone the second she saw it, veiled behind the tough veneer she knew so well, and if she hadn’t seen it with her own eyes she wouldn’t have believed it. 

“We had an understanding, Mike.” Callie’s eyes were chips of ice, but her voice was low and heated. 

An understanding? What the hell was the girl talking about? Fights between Callie and Mike were par for the course, but there was an undercurrent  of something bigger here, some raw nerve that had inadvertently been exposed. 

Mike grimaced, but squeezed his eyes shut and nodded. At the gesture, the tall man holding him released his grip. 

Mike shook himself like a bulldog. Holding his head high, only the flush in his cheeks and the hectic glitter of his eyes gave away the wildness of the emotions he was holding in. He looked only at Tess and said, “I’m heading home. We can talk in the morning.”

“Sure.” Tess was almost at a loss, but letting Mike leave seemed to be the path of least resistance. Now that the shouting was done, Jimmy’s enforcers were melting back to the perimeter of the room. As Mike pushed past them on his way out the door, Tess saw Carlos and Paulie exchange wide-eyed looks. Joel’s eyes were riveted on the stranger, Callie’s newest conquest. 

Through the awkward silence that followed, Joel rumbled, “Tommy. You always seem to turn up when there’s fixin’ to be a fight.” He folded his arms over his chest. 

Callie gave first Joel, and then Tommy sharp looks. “You know him?”

“Well enough,” Joel spat. “He’s my goddamned brother.”

Tommy laughed. “I’m the younger, smarter, more handsome Miller brother.” Tess raised her eyebrows toward Joel, but he avoided her eyes, a glower on his face. A brother? Was that who Joel had come to Boston with? By the sour set of Joel’s features, there was no love lost between the two.

“You shouldn’t be here.”

“I got every right to be here, Joel,” Tommy said, an affable smile not quite covering up the tightness in his eyes. “It’s a free country. Or it oughta be.”

Joel snorted. “You just keep tellin’ yourself that. Maybe it’ll make you feel better when you’re gettin’ fucked by FEDRA.”

“I didn’t know you two were related,” Callie said, a frown on her face. By the time Joel had joined them, Callie was already away most of the time on her farm runs. As far as Tess knew, Callie preferred to keep a constantly rotating roster of lovers but she didn’t seem interested in adding Joel to the list. Of course, it was entirely possible that Callie had sampled what Joel had to offer, but he was smart enough to be discreet about it if she had. 

“Hey, baby,” Tommy said, putting hands up in a placating gesture. He put them back down again when Callie narrowed her eyes at him. “I swear I didn’t know you ran with my brother’s crew.” 

“It’s my crew.” Tess faced Tommy and put her hands on her hips, making her body fill the small space between them. 

“That right?” Tommy’s surprised eyes went to Joel’s impassive face. “Just as well. He ain’t much of a leader. How many people trusted you and ended up dead, Joel?”

Joel growled and balled his hands into fists. “I was better that than the alternative.”

Tommy laughed bitterly. “I know a few people you can tell that to when you get to hell, big brother.”

Joel started forward, but Tess stayed him with one hand on his hard chest. He was vibrating with violence. “Not now,” she murmured.

Joel glared daggers at his brother, but he checked himself, standing stiffly and folding his arms over his chest again. 

Tess turned to Tommy, who looked just as angry as Joel but less like he was about to explode. “I hate to interrupt the family reunion, but I had business tonight. I can see that’s not going to happen.” She shot a severe glance at Callie, who shrugged apologetically. “Give me a minute with my people, and then you two can be on your way.” 

Tommy was suddenly all charm again. “Sure thing, boss lady.”

“Tess,” she said flatly.

He smiled widely. “Tess. Very nice to meet you, ma’am. I can see you have your hands full.” He turned to Callie and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. “I’ll meet you outside, darlin’.”

“Yeah. Meet you there.” As Tommy sauntered off, her eyes darted between Tommy and Joel, like she was trying to find the resemblance between the two men. 

“What the hell was all that?” Tess asked when Tommy was out of sight. 

Callie’s jaw clenched, but she kept her face neutral. “That’s between me and Mike.” She sighed and said, “Look, I’m sorry, Tess. Things got out of hand. Can I take a raincheck on that drink? I need to get out of here.”

Tess shrugged. The monthly team time was all but ruined anyway. “Fine. As long as you’re ready to give my your full report on the latest from the farm tomorrow morning.”

Callie nodded. “Sure.”

“Hey, boss?” Paulie interjected. “If you’re all done with us, can we…” He gestured with the half-full bottle of whiskey toward the far corner of the room, where an intense game of poker was in progress. 

Tess rescued the bottle from him. She would definitely need it later. “Fine. Go. Good luck. See you tomorrow.”

Paulie and Carlos were already halfway across the room by the time she finished talking. 

“See you tomorrow, then.” Callie turned to go.

Joel, who’d been silent since his brother had left, suddenly said, “You don’t wanna go home with Tommy.”

“God damn it!” Callie whirled around and stepped right up to his chest, even though her head barely came up to his chin. She brandished her finger in his face, her eyes snapping with anger. “We don’t know each other very well, but let me tell you something. I am going to fuck your brother tonight, and nothing you can say will stop me.”

“He’s a goddamn Firefly,” Joel whispered through clenched teeth. The bar had attained its usual noise level and Tess thought that only she and Callie were close enough to hear what Joel had said, but she still looked furtively around to make sure. A Firefly? Joel’s brother was a fucking Firefly? 

Now she knew why Joel had said he shouldn’t be there. The Fireflies had caused an explosion last year that had accidentally taken down part of the outer wall on the south end of the QZ, flooding the area around the mall and the old intake center with infected. FEDRA forces had fallen back to a temporary barricade a few blocks north, but a lot of civilians had been killed or infected and everyone had lost important real estate in the QZ, ground they couldn’t afford to lose. FEDRA had been executing all known Fireflies and arresting family and sympathizers ever since. 

Callie was momentarily taken aback. Then she glared haughtily at Joel. “Well. At least he’ll be interesting.”

Joel’s eyes twitched, but he stepped aside and swept his arm out. “In that case, be my guest.”

A wave of fatigue washed over Tess as she watched Callie leave. She was tired of the constant tension between Mike and Callie, tired of dealing with Paulie’s loud gregariousness and Carlos’s silence and Joel’s stubborn anger. She felt drained. She didn’t want to deal with the ammo cache, she didn’t want to be responsible for all these lives. On top of all that, she had a pounding headache. 

She took a deep breath and turned to Joel, whose bruised eye was swelling shut. “C’mon. I need to hear what you found out.” She fought the tickle in her throat until it turned into a coughing fit, leaving her wheezing for breath. “Fuck.”

“That don’t sound too good. Why don’t you sleep on it? We can talk tomorrow.”

It was a measure of how wrung out Tess was feeling that she said, “Yeah, okay.”

* * *

**November 14, 2014**

_Tess sits on the bed and leans against the wall of the tiny hotel room that they’ve been allocated as housing. It’s one of those business suites, complete with a little kitchenette with a two-burner electric stove, a microwave, and a half-fridge. Which would be nice to have if they actually had any food, but it’s been almost a week since they were given even short rations; the last two distribution days her dad stood in line for fourteen hours both times and still didn’t get anything._

_Jake had brought home a dead rat two days ago; she’d watched his gaunt fingers clumsily peeling the skin off it and cleaning out its guts and the surreality of it had almost sent her floating out of her body. Her dad had seared it in a pan with a few drops of precious cooking oil and she’d wolfed her meager portion down without complaint, too hungry to even mind the taste._

_Today is Tuesday, which means it’s distribution day, and her stomach is hollow. Empty, empty, empty. It’s been almost a year and she hates it here. They keep saying they’ll find a cure, but right now there’s no food and there’s nothing to do. At fourteen, she’s below the minimum work requirement age, and schools have been suspended until further notice._

_Her dad is gone most of the day, assigned to laborious wall building and clearing duties when a spot couldn’t be found for him as a paper pusher in the heated FEDRA administration building. He comes home each night, exhausted and bitterly cold, and after he hands over the slightly squashed half of the cheese or peanut butter sandwich he’s saved for her from his lunch, he rolls himself up in his thin wool blanket and faces the wall and falls asleep within minutes. She hates taking food from him because he’s working so hard and he needs it more than she does. When she’d tried to refuse him, though, he’d given her a hard stare and laid the sandwich down on the table, saying, “If you don’t eat when you have the opportunity, then you’re not going to survive.”_

_She’d stared at it for a full five minutes, her mouth watering, before she’d picked it up and eaten it one tiny bite at a time, just to make it last longer. Some days it’s all she has to eat._

_Today, like everyone else with a last name starting with A-L, her dad will line up in the unseasonably icy wind and wait for food that probably won’t be there._

_Jake has been assigned to guard duty; he spends his days in a watchtower near the closed-down intake center, ostensibly on watch for infected but he lets it slip once that mostly they shoot people, healthy people, people who are just looking for the protection of high walls between them and the monsters roaming the ruins of the city.  He won’t talk about his days much._

_Her dad’s plan to bring trade goods into the QZ with them had been a good one, but they hadn’t counted on FEDRA’s requisitioning most of it; by the time they’d finally been processed at the intake center, their suitcases were almost empty except for the clothes they’d brought with them. FEDRA had taken every toiletry, every scrap of food, every bandage and bottle of alcohol and given them a stack of ration cards in return, ration cards that, as far as Tess can tell, are as useless as the cardstock they’re printed on, which is too stiff to even use as toilet paper. She’s amazed they didn’t take her knife too._

_The electric lights flicker and dim as Tess idly cleans her fingernails with the tip of her knife and tries to ignore the gnawing hunger in her belly. The brownouts are getting more frequent, which isn’t surprising considering the power plant is outside the QZ and the transmission lines are long and hard to protect. The military takes patrols out, but they’re spread too thin as it is, so they’ve started rationing the power they do have, instituting rolling brownouts and, lately, blackouts. Except for the governor’s house and the FEDRA administration buildings and administrative housing. Those are considered essential infrastructure._

_Things hadn’t been too bad for the first six months. It had been a little chaotic, but that was to be expected while all the kinks were ironed out. But then the food shortages had started. Days when they’d go to the distribution center to pick up rations and come home empty-handed. Just every once in a while at first, then more and more frequently as the administration scrambled to stretch supplies and feed the thirty thousand residents of the quarantine zone. There’d been riots in the poorer areas, where the shortages were the worst, but FEDRA had quelled these ruthlessly, soldiers gunning down starving people in the street, serving the dual purpose of ending the rioting and making fewer mouths to feed. Now shortages are the rule, not the exception, and starvation is a constant companion for too many people here._

_She feels useless. Too young to be assigned to a job and bored by reading the same three books over and over again, she’s started defying her father’s orders and venturing out during the day, her switchblade a comforting weight in her pocket. She scavenges the dumpsters and trashcans, collects paper from the street, and keeps her eyes open for anything that looks remotely useful. The worst days are when it snows and the streets fill with gray slush that seeps into her hiking boots, chilling her to the bone. She’s not going out there today; the wind is too bitter and she has too little energy. She misses central heating, misses having an electric heater or a fireplace she can cozy up to, soaking in warmth like a stone baking under the sun. She’s always cold, even when she and Jake pile on every piece of clothing they own and huddle together at night under the blue acrylic blanket he’s spent an entire ration card on, trying to pool their body heat before it evaporates into the freezing air._

_Jake. He cries at night sometimes when he thinks she’s asleep, clinging to her like she’s the only person left alive in the world. She wants to comfort him but she thinks it’s probably better to keep letting him think she’s asleep, and she’s strangely comforted by his clutching arms and the shaking of his body as he weeps into her shoulder from behind. Tess’s father won’t even hug her anymore, he’s consumed by the struggle for food and beaten down by the responsibility and the burden of keeping all of them alive. He has no warmth left for comfort._

_It’s dark outside when Jake and her dad return to the apartment, their faces pinched with cold and gaunt with hunger. She pulls the blanket around her closer and looks up at them hopefully, but the dull defeat in both their eyes tells her everything she needs to know. Tears leak from under her eyelids and spill down her hollow cheeks. She’s so hungry. There’s not even a sandwich today, because Dad didn’t go to work and so didn’t get his FEDRA-subsidized lunch._

_Her eyes droop wearily. No point staying awake any longer, really. She doesn’t have to energy to talk._

_A crash makes her eyes fly open; her dad has thrown an empty pan across the room, where it has left a fist-sized divot in the wall over the couch. She realizes with surprise that he’s kneeling next to her now, and she didn’t even see him move. She doesn’t know if he moved that quickly or if she passed out briefly._

_“Tessa, things are going to change.” He brushes the tears from her cheeks. “I promise.”_

* * *

**August, 2027**

She was dying. It was official. Every third breath brought on a coughing fit that wracked her lungs and her head was definitely going to explode.

Mike took look at her when she walked through the door the next morning and said, “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Get the fuck back to bed before you give it to the rest of us.” It was still early; no one else had arrived. 

She shook her head. “Callie’s coming in for her report this morning. And I need to talk to Joel later. It’s important. It can’t wait too long…” Another cough cut her off and nearly doubled her over. 

“I’ll take care of it,” he said, and pressed their last two tablets of codeine into her hand. “Get some rest, Tess.”

She was too fatigued to argue. She didn’t even complain that taking the pills would fuck up her inventory book. Instead, she closed her hand around the pills and said, “Don’t fuck anything up while I’m gone.”

Mike laughed, like she knew he would. “Get outta here.”

She stumbled back to her apartment and fell into bed, barely pausing to dry-swallow the pills and take her boots off before she fell into a fitful sleep. 

She woke as a dull thudding wove through her consciousness, and it wasn’t coming from her head. Swimming out of the pill-haze, she realized someone was knocking on her door. “Go away,” she mumbled. She shivered an pulled the thin blanket up over her head. She was freezing but the touch of her clothes on her skin made her shudder. 

A wet cough tore at her chest. 

The knocking continued, more insistently now, accompanied by muffled voices, ones she didn’t recognize.

“Go AWAY!” she yelled. Or tried to; as she gathered her breath her lungs seared with pain, so she barely got the words out before another coughing fit curled her into a miserable ball on the bed, clutching her sore stomach muscles. A thread of fear surfaced through her feverish mind: this wasn’t a normal cold, and she was very, very ill. 

“Fuck,” she muttered, taking slow, shallow breaths and listening to the rattling noise it made. Each breath felt like a knife in her chest. “Fuck,” she said again, an angry tear squeezing from the corner of her eye. The thing she hated most in life was feeling helpless, but this wasn’t something she could shoot or punch. She couldn’t even muster the energy to stand up, much less answer the door. She was a prisoner in her failing body and could only watch and rage while her immune system fought for her, and right now it was doing a shitty fucking job. Of all the ways she could have died, she wouldn’t have bet on a case of pneumonia. It was so fucking…normal. A wave of anger swept through her. She couldn’t die now, she had too fucking much to do. 

The knocking had stopped and there was blessed silence once again, so she closed her eyes and tried to drift off, more exhausted from being awake than she was frightened of not waking up again.

_Scratch._ Her eyes flew open again at the noise, a metallic scratching at her door that meant someone was trying to jimmy her lock. Alarm bells rang in her mind. This wasn’t the first time she’d had to defend herself against unwelcome visitors, all she needed was to get to the gun she kept stashed in the wall at the head of her mattress.

An ill-timed breath brought on another coughing fit that left her so weak she could barely move, but she pushed the blanket off and crawled forward on trembling limbs. Pushing through the hot, heavy air felt like she was trying to swim through molasses. She pulled the faded tourist map of Boston from the wall, tearing the corners away from the ancient tape that held it, and her fingers scrabbled at the loose piece of sheetrock that she’d cut out with a jigsaw and carefully replaced to make the little stash-hole in the wall. Sweat was streaming down her face into her eyes now and she shook with the effort but the scratching at her door, the subtle but unmistakable sounds of someone coming for her, spurred her on when she’d reached the limits of her endurance. Finally the square of sheetrock pulled away, the old edges crumbling as she dropped it on the mattress, and she could feel the molded plastic handle of the Glock semi-auto under her shaking fingertips. 

It was already loaded, that was a blessing. Her hands were shaking so badly now she couldn’t have loaded the clip. With a moan she collapsed onto her back, half-propped against the wall, and raised the gun. It felt like it weighed fifty pounds; she needed both arms to support it as she took wavering aim toward the doorway. 

When the door flew open she was already squeezing the trigger.

The two men ducked as the shot flew wide to bury itself in the ceiling above their heads.

“Fuck! Tess, put it down!”

Tess blinked in confusion as wavering outlines resolved themselves into familiar faces. 

“Mike?” The high, frightened sound in her throat was barely recognizable as her own voice. Her arms fell limply to the mattress and the gun thudded to the floor. Relief made her momentarily dizzy. Mike was here and she would be okay. A coughing spasm curled her over onto her side, stealing her breath and wracking her tired muscles.

“Jesus.” A cool hand was on her forehead. “She’s burnin’ up.” 

“Joel.” His name came out as a croak. _The hell are you doing here now, you had a pickup today, and we were supposed to talk earlier,_ she wanted to say. His name was all she could manage. 

“Listen to her breathe. She’s comin’ down with pneumonia. That ain’t gonna fix itself.”

“You some kind of doctor now, Joel?” Mike’s tone was derisive, but Tess knew him well enough to know that he was hiding his own fear.

“I seen it before.” Joel sounded grim. “You say it started a couple days ago?”

_Days? No. It started this morning, and then Mike gave me those codeine pills…_

“Yeah. I haven’t seen her since.”

“We gotta get her fever down.” A strong arm curled around her shoulders and propped her up. “C’mon, swallow these and drink some water.” She could feel Joel’s voice rumbling in his chest as she leaned against him. Dutifully, she swallowed the pills he pushed between her lips and then sipped the water until the glass was empty. She let her head drop back onto Joel’s shoulder, exhausted. “You eaten anything in the last couple days?”

“What day is it?”

“Christ.” Joel shifted her in his arms and lowered her back down to the mattress. “See if she’s got anything here,” he said to Mike. “We got any antibiotics?”

She didn’t. She knew she didn’t. Antibiotics were a controlled substance and too valuable to keep in the inventory. She always sold them immediately. She thought of the useless stack of ration cards she’d gotten the last time she’d sold a couple bottles of penicillin and wanted to weep. 

“No,” Mike said. She could hear them rummaging around in her kitchen cupboards, then the hiss of gas as someone turned on a burner on her stove. 

She knew where they could find antibiotics. She needed to tell them, but the effort of opening her mouth, of breathing deep enough to speak, eluded her. “Robert,” she whispered. If anyone had antibiotics, it would be that squirrely little bastard. No one answered her, they hadn’t heard. Grimacing in frustration, she breathed slowly, trying to avoid another coughing fit. She wanted to pound her fist on the bed, yell to get their attention, anything, but she was too tired. Instead, she floated between sleep and wakefulness and listened to the homey sounds of someone cooking on her stove, strangely lulled by the nostalgic familiarity.  

“Okay, Tess.” Mike was kneeling next to her mattress now, pulling her up and pressing a warm mug to her lips. “Come on. Drink up.”

Mike tipped the contents into her mouth. Hot chicken noodle soup. She grimaced as she chewed the mushy pasta. 

“Robert’ll have antibiotics, I reckon. I’ll go see him.” 

Relief flooded through her. Joel knew that Robert was their best bet.

“Yeah, okay. I’ll stay with her.”

Tess pushed the mug away from her with feeble hands. “No, ‘m fine. You…run things.”

Mike pressed the mug to her lips again and made her drink more of the soup. “Don’t be stupid, Tessa. Things won’t fall apart if we’re not around for a few days. I’m not going anywhere.”

She waited until Joel left to talk again. “Mike…” Every word was a monumental effort and she fought hard for every breath. “If…I don’t…you have to…” She saw Mike’s eyes light up with fear, even before the tiny cough in her throat turned into an all-body spasm, leaving her moaning and curled up on her side, clutching her stomach. 

“You better get some rest.” She felt him pulling the sheet up over her and she wanted to protest but she was too fucking tired to even move a finger. “You’re gonna be just fine.”

He sounded unconvinced, but she closed her eyes anyway. 

 

_He was unbuttoning her shirt. She kept her eyes squeezed shut but she smiled; she loved the way he took her clothes off so slowly, like he was unwrapping a gift. She could feel the calluses on his palms when he touched her, and her overheated body rose to meet him._

_He gave a low chuckle. “I always knew you weren’t as much of a good girl as you pretended to be.”_

_“Oh, shut up.” She would have said more, but he’d unbuttoned her jeans and the heat of his breath between her legs made her gasp and bite her lip. God, it had been so long. Why had it been so long? She couldn’t think, but she needed to feel his lips on hers again. It was a hunger that made her heart ache. She’d missed him so much._

_She cracked her eyes open and saw her old room, just as she’d left it, the pink bedspread strewn with discarded clothes and electronics, Artemis the bear staring blankly up at the ceiling from the mattress beside her._

_A tremor of wrongness shook her. No. This place didn’t exist anymore. She’d watched it fall in the bombing after they moved into the quarantine zone._

_A warm tongue wriggled against her exposed nipple, teasing it to hardness, but that also was wrong somehow. She’d never had sex in this bed. And he’d never…_

_Fear gripped her, and she remembered._

_Tess fisted her hand in the dark hair on the back of his head and pulled back, hard enough that the piece of scalp the hair was attached to sloughed off in her hand. She recoiled and dropped the piece of scalp in disgust while his head fell forward again onto her naked chest. But not before she’d seen his face._

_The eyes…his dark eyes, so brown they’d almost been black…the eyes she’d loved staring into so much, looking for the secrets of the universe. The right one shone a dull red, and the other…the other was gone completely, eaten by the ridged fungal growths that had pushed through his orbital cavity and was devouring him from the inside out. The skin around his nose was just starting to split from the pressure of the relentless growth in his skull, but she still recognized him._

_In terror, she pushed him off of her and scrambled away. “No!”_

_A thick stream of mucus ran from one of his nostrils, over his mouth and chin. She looked down at herself in disgust and saw the slimy residue he…it…had left when it kissed her. Frantically she rubbed at her skin with her bare hands, desperate to wipe his touch away as he moved toward her again._

_“I’ve missed you. I’ve been waiting so long.” His voice sounded exactly the same, that was the worst thing. To hear that voice come from the ruined mouth of this…this…thing was more than she could bear. She slipped past him and ran toward the door, but she was brought up short by another set of gleaming red eyes embedded in a familiar face that was veined and overgrown with cordyceps._

_“Dad!” she gasped in horror._

_The thing in front of her smiled, showing cracked and rotting teeth. “We’ve both been waiting, Tessa.”_

_She was trapped. They were advancing on her from in front and behind. Desperately, she turned around, looking for something she could use to fend them off. That was when she caught sight of her own reflection in the mirror hanging on the closet door._

_Her brown hair hung lankly from one side of her head but had fallen out on the other side because sheets of orange fungus had pushed their way out of her skull and covered her scalp. One of her eyes sagged like jelly above a cheek that was covered with soft, downy white fuzz, and her lip was distorted and swollen with hard grey nodules that traveled up into her nasal cavity._

_She screamed._

 

“Easy now.” A warm hand was pushing her back onto her bed. She was covered in sweat and shaking.

“Fuck,” she breathed, and then started coughing weakly. Every muscle in her body ached.  

“Sounded like a bad one.” 

Tess peered through the gloom, but couldn’t make out the face of the man sitting on the floor by her mattress. “Joel?”

“Yeah.” He grunted as he stood up. “You feel up to some food?”

“Where’s Mike?” She winced as she dragged herself into a sitting position and shielded her eyes when he snapped the overhead kitchen light on. “And why does my ass hurt so much?”

He gave a dry chuckle as he poured the contents of a can into a pot and started a burner on the stove. “Mike’s sleepin’. We’ve been takin’ turns sittin’ with you. And your ass probably hurts because that’s where we been stickin’ the needles.”

Tess rubbed her face and tried to concentrate. “How long have I been out?”

“‘Bout five days.” He stirred the contents of the pot. 

“Jesus. I don’t remember anything.” She suddenly realized that she was wearing only her sports bra and underwear, but she didn’t have the energy to pull the sheet up over herself. Joel was just going to get a show. “Did I try to shoot you?”

“You did,” he said, carrying a mug over to her. 

“I’m pretty glad I didn’t hit you.” She took the mug from him but her arms shook so much when she tried to raise it to her lips that he took it back and held it for her. 

“Me too.” The corners of his eyes crinkled into that almost-smile he sometimes wore when he was in a good mood. 

The tomato soup was salty and hot, and it might have been the best thing she’d ever tasted. 

“Robert had antibiotics?” she finally said, when she’d swallowed most of the soup. 

“Yeah. When he found out they were for you he doubled his price. Little shit.” Joel glowered. 

Tess snorted, but it turned into another cough. “Ah, fuck. That hurts.” She took deep, slow breaths until the unbearable tickling pressure in her lungs went away. “Let me know how much I owe you, and we’ll square up.”

Joel shrugged. “That can wait till you’re feelin’ yourself again. I ain’t in any hurry.”

Tess looked away. If she didn’t know people better, she’d be tempted to say that Joel was being kind to her, but she’d long ago lost the knack of expressing gratitude directly. “Guess I’ll live to see my twenty-eighth birthday after all,” she cracked instead. 

Beside her, she could feel Joel go still. 

“You’re twenty-seven?” His voice finally rumbled out.

There was something in his voice that she couldn’t identify. Not fear, or surprise even. Something else, an intensity that she didn’t understand. “Yeah,” she said, keeping her voice even. “You got a problem with that?”

He stood abruptly. “No.” He took the empty mug over to the sink and gave it a quick swirl under the running tap to rinse it out. 

He stood in the space between the kitchen and the living room, where her mattress was set up. His shoulders were so broad they seemed to take up half of the hallway, but she could see from his body language that he was agitated about something; he shifted his weight from foot to foot and rubbed his broken watch with his thumb. “Mike’ll be here in an hour or so. I gotta go.”

He left without another word, without waiting for a response from her. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So how about that update schedule, eh? Yeah. Turns out that this story is messier than I expected, and I've had a lot going on that forced me to push this project to the back burner. I will continue to update as regularly as I possibly can, but I'm not getting any less busy. 
> 
> This chapter in particular was a very long time coming! Most of the bones have been there for months, but there were a few moving pieces that I just couldn't get to work. After a lot of beta feedback and four rewrites, here we are. Many thanks to both Mr. Mac and to RW for their willingness to look at the messy bits for me. 
> 
> Tess's dream owes a direct debt to a scene in RW's [Flying to Wyoming II: Miles to Go](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2184879) (it's at the beginning of [Chapter 14: Redoubt](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2184879/chapters/5448665)) that so creeped me the fuck out I couldn't stop thinking about it. It's not stealing, it's an homage. 
> 
> The tradition of monthly toasts with the crew was started by Tess's father, and it did come from the culture of corporate management and teambuilding with which he was familiar. Tess continues the tradition and thus unknowingly perpetuates the ethos of Utilizing Your Human Capital to Effectively Leverage Individual Skillsets, Creating Synergistic Opportunities for Growth™. Even the apocalypse can't kill that shit.


End file.
